What were your reactions to the answers to this question? (in general)?

Question

Please notice that I'm on my best behavior today and am staying impartial on this (for now) and am just trying to facilitate discussion.


Please read the answers that people provided for thee basis of their (dis)belief in god(s):

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20060831085442AAeTJtR&r=w

I'm not trying to get you to attack specific answers, but what do you think IN GENERAL about:

1) the bases the atheists provided
2) the bases the theists provided
and
3) the bases the agnostics provided


Is there a theme that you see?
Does this help you understand the difference between these 3 general groups of people?


Thanks for playing along.
I think that this is actually becoming a fruitful discussion.

No offense, but how can people give this question a thumbs down?

If you're not here to examine and discuss people's answers and questions regarding religion & spirituality......

Why the fvck are you here to begin with?


(i'm losing my grip on the good behavior thing)

Answer 1

Wow, I figured my question idea would have legs but this is great!!!

1) I agree with my posting in the question :-)

2) Most of the reasoning seemed to come from personal and/or emotional experience.

3) They seem to be riding the fence. They really don't believe in a god logically but emotionally they can't separate from the possibility of a god.

Answer 2

I don't see that much commonality within the three groups, as people from different groups use much the same logics and people from different belief groups share logic-type.

I'd group them like this:

Experience -- experience of the world and of non-supernatural explanations working; experience of god and of belief in god working.

Negative proof: No proof of god or reason to believe, belief makes no sense or is incomprehensible; no proof of non-supernatural explanations, non-supernatural explanations make no sense or are implausible.

Though, trying to recollect so much text I read once and skimmed once, some people may have used combinations.

Some of the agnostics seemed to use combinations, too -- that is, their experience suggests atheism, but non-supernatural explanations seem implausible. So each type of reason pulls them a different direction.

I'll have to go back and reread. This IS very interesting, but this forum isn't designed or intended for this sort of discussion. Still, I'm not giving your query a thumbs down.

Answer 3

I don't feel qualified to judge this impartially. After all, I think my approach is logical, but christians think their approach is logical too. I think I've made my decision based on evidence, and they think they have evidence too. So about the most impartial thing I can come up with is:
1. Atheists use scientific proof.
2. Theists use spiritual proof.
3. Agnostics can see both sides and don't think either one is convincing enough.

Answer 4

I think it is too involved of a question for YA. People have to summarize their beliefs in a very tight nutshell, and can't go back and debate. I think you would be better off asking something more specific, such as what people think about a specific piece of evidence that matches up with a certain belief system

Answer 5

Personally, I believe in both God and science, in all of its potential and its discovery. In all of it's life and learning I believe God exists in, and functions via the avenues of scientific principal.

I think God exists in the things that are too small to see and too large to see... as the buddhists understand.

It is like the point that the buddhists speak of, the neutral point between any two extremes, the silence, the space, the distance. It is there, that I feel God is, and exists.

I don't think that christians (or religion) are "right" and I don't think that the atheists that base their entire reason for their disbelief on the "fact" that They "don't want to believe in, what they can't see." Is a good enough reason not to believe...

As far as scientific principal goes... we know we can't yet "see" half of the things that are actually IN existance making up vital bits and pieces of the fabric of life itself.

You can't see a fetus with the naked eye but yet it exists... Maybe we just havent found the technology yet to be able to "Find God" therefore, I believe that closing yourself off from potential is against the entire principal of; Scientific Theory, potential or Kinetic energy and the entire microscopic spectrum of existance. We CAN'T say it doesn't exist and just stop looking...

I believe that christians and religion are the problem... or what they have unfortunately become anyway. I think the ignorance of one breeds the pride and denial of another... Christians and religion CREATE atheists!

I believe what I do because I chose to... From my research, my personal experience, my studies of language and biblical, religious history and history itself... I believe because it resonates something inside my inner being. It is a feeling, an experience, a growth process that I find peace within and beauty and life and science and all that potential and possibility... I can't deny God just because I can't see Him... I have to believe that I will one day figure out this great mystery. We all need a reference point, a margin, a human means of percieving the inconcievable. I believe I have a soul and I believe it animates my form and orchestrates my function. Why I believe it without proof is the same reason a scientist believes in the validity of their expirement, why the mathematician believes and often spends a life time in obsession over their principal, their formula, their equation. God should be obsessed over like galois and newton and copernicus obsessed over symmetry and physics and equations. God is the greatest mathematician. I believe the greatest men in History believed this because they touched Him in their obsessions. Michangelo, Davinci, Nash, Newton, All of the early Chinese mathematicians, the ionian and pythagorean schools, from then to now...We HAVE to understand and to understand we have to believe... We should not ever just cut potential off at the knee... You still feel the leg and respond to it ... even when you do. It is in that phenom that you find elements of spirit and the possibility of God.

I don't believe in the closing off of any potential or possibility... I thin that stems from biased fear and pridefull intelligence. It IS possible to be TOO intelligent sometimes. Especially when it limits your to such a desperate condition of conformity and absoluteness with no room for the possibility of any othe way

But still... I can better understand and even respect the atheistic outlook more so than I can the ignorance of modern day religion.
The religious are mostly just brow beating, hype and sensation seeking drones who don't usually KNOW why they believe what they do but are fast to quote a book and shove it down your throat.

I believe that religion was created to divide and form a distraction away from the truth that sits within every man at the core of his being. I think everyone knows there is a God... Some people use Him, some people abuse Him and some people deny Him.

But even in the denial of a thing... we still admit it's existence. God lives in that very principal! right smack dab in the inbetween. It is the space that spirit occupies and often times a human being can't concieve of it because we operate mentally within the confines of either side of an extreme with almost everything we do, think, and believe...

Answer 6

What I'm gathering is this:

1. Believers have experienced Him.

2. Non-believers haven't.

3. Agnostics have trouble making up their mind.

Answer 7

It seems that

1) Atheists rely on logic
2) Theists rely on personal experience
3) Agnostics rely on observations

A horribly general explaination, I know, but that's what I observed.

Answer 8

You're doing a fine job....Thanks AND my answer is the same as the guy directly above me.

Answer 9

Just a minute. Gardian, who are you calling a bigot?

I havn't had a chance to read all the posts.

thats it , to bad.

Answer 10

your just another closed minded bigot please we as nonchristians use our brains and had bad experiances with fanatics like you who think you have the answer when you dont, get a clue christianity isnt for everyone and not everyone is going to like your bible or its beliefs at all. if you really read your bible you would see why most people are atheist theist or agnostics. i for one am not of those groups i am a pantheist, and we know without a doubt there is a god but yet you christians like to attack us too saying we are false go figure most of you are just closed minded anyways