Are you a theist, atheist, gnostic or agnostic? Explain why.?

Question

Your reasoning shouldn’t be based on dogma alone. Direct experience, provable statements or supporting testimony please. Imagine this as a lawyer show on TV. If the [holy book of choice here] is your primary, you at least need a second witness or supporting evidence to back the claim. You can't call yourself to the stand either.

Definitions:
* A Theist believes in a supreme power(s) in any way shape or form.
* An Atheist does not believe the existence of a supreme power.
* A Gnostic believes that DIRECT experience/knowledge of higher orders, possibly but not necessarily including a supreme being, is possible and necessary.
* An Agnostic believes that direct experience of such higher orders, especially of a supreme power, is either impossible or irrelevant.

The definitions are a bit narrow, and you might disagree strongly. You could also feel you fit into more than one category, conceivably even those in opposition. If either’s the case, please raise the issue and argue it.

I also don't think the definitions are particularly good, but they are the most common general division of the subject at hand. AS such, I used them so everybody could speak from a common platform. If I had created my own arbitrary definitions, the question would not have been as widely applicable.

Answer 1

Agnostic.

While in a criminal court setting, no judge could ever find evidence or direct proof for a deity, life is not a court. In reality, I accept that there might be things that are real that are either beyond my comprehension, or not made visible to me (yet).

I severely doubt a god exists, and if one does exist, I even more severely doubt it's existence runs in correlation to any human religious system... BUT... it could be out there, or something of a higher order could exist.

Mainly, I just don't care, as this possibility is so far-fetched and so irrelevant to human life (becuse really, life goes on regardless of what you believe) that it's not worth worrying about unless some deity decides to clear the air.

Life is routinely uncertain and shifting... people like to grab hold of constants, and God is one for many people. Fair enough... but life is still uncertain and shifting.

Answer 2

1 and 4

Answer 3

Theist - Pagan - Pantheist i.e. belief that a "supreme" power or energy dwells in every living thing. I do not worship nature or any specific creation in it but I do respect it and fully accept that I am a part of it and that the same energies run through me as they do everything else.

Proof: I see the "powers" of Nature everyday and even though man can harness that power (briefly) man can never completely control it which leads to the belief that it is more powerful than man.

Most, if not all, seemingly miraculous phenomena can be explained naturally through science, thus I believe that science also lends support to the Pantheist perspective.

I'm not saying that I'm right or that anyone else is wrong. This is just what I believe personally.

Answer 4

Atheist or agnostic, depending on my mood. Why? I do not tell; I question. Why is it that you don't believe in Odin? Why do miracles and NDE's experienced by all other religions besides yours not count as real? You see, we are both unbelievers in almost everything. I just believe in one fewer God.

Some people will say that there is proof of a general God of no specific religion. I ask them why, and I get everything ranging from irreducible complexity to Godel's proof. I would be happy to explain how the wing evolved or which of Godel's axioms isn't valid or why saying that God must exist because otherwise, what created the big bang, but that would take an entire book and I don't have all day. Others have written it down before me, and if you wish you can find it.

Answer 5

theist - I have yet to see evidence that our universe and its physical laws are either self generating or the result of the physical laws of some meta-verse. However, I do not believe that there is any evidence to demonstrate a supreme power has interjected itself into the universe since it was created. If the universe was created by something, we are completely insignificant to that something.

Also, I am open to the idea that the atheistic view is correct. But given what I know now, I think it is more likely that the universe is the creation of some sentient power. Perhaps ironically, I would love to be proven wrong since that would mean that the question is settled.

Answer 6

Gnostic, maybe...?
I see no evidence of spirits or anything supernatural...Evidence meaning something I can experience with one of my five senses. I generally trust scientific answers but, even though they explain how, they don't explain why. There have been 'coincidence's' that are hard to say are the random work of, say, evolution. So, I'm inclined to believe there is some 'higher involvement'. However, I simply can not reason that a single male is the creator of over a billion people, loves them individually, but creates an eternal place of suffering for them. Not to mention the creation of the plants and animals, too. Plus, the creation of gases and planets with no life, an ecological system, basically, living and non-living things.

Answer 7

I refuse to be pigeon holed..

I am a buddhist, a taoist, and a philosophist - yet I believe in a higher power - except not in the sense of any beings 'in the books' like the God in the bible, the tora, or the koran.

The definitions are too narrow, and are artificial and arbitrary. Human beings are not lab mice, and cannot be put into little cages. The potential of a human being is infinite, both above and below, both divine and wretched.

Answer 8

I am an Atheist.

I simply have never been able to accept the whole concept of a supreme being or entity. Even when I was 5 years old in Sunday School, I would listen to the stories from the bible and just shake my head. Its all just too fantastical, too perfect and, well, too dang silly. Religion is simply illogical.

Answer 9

I call myself an atheist, but, I'm more of an agnostic atheist.

Edited to add:

This pretty much explains what I meant.

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."
-Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

Answer 10

Atheist...because to me the bible is like a book of fairy tales...I don't believe in either because I am educated and can think for myself. Also no evidence exists proving a supreme being.