☆ TexasFreethinker ☆ Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 One characteristic of fundamentalist christians is their complete and unwavering certainty that the christian god exists (and usually that they know just what he's thinking on all topics). As non-believers, we don't think that the christian god exists, and many of us don't think that other gods exist either. How certain are you of those beliefs? I think of this as a scientific hypothesis - in science beliefs are always subject to new evidence and you're never 100% sure of the truth. Does this approach apply to non-belief in gods too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 Could you define 'Gods'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
☆ TexasFreethinker ☆ Posted October 14, 2007 Author Share Posted October 14, 2007 Could you define 'Gods'? Not easily! I purposely left that vague since there are so many definitions out there for both the christian god and other gods. For purposes of this poll let's assume a god, at a minimum, has the ability to have created the universe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparrow Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 One characteristic of fundamentalist christians is their complete and unwavering certainty that the christian god exists (and usually that they know just what he's thinking on all topics). As non-believers, we don't think that the christian god exists, and many of us don't think that other gods exist either. How certain are you of those beliefs? I think of this as a scientific hypothesis - in science beliefs are always subject to new evidence and you're never 100% sure of the truth. Does this approach apply to non-belief in gods too? I'm 100% sure the christian god does not exist because the universe would look entirely different to what reality shows me if he did exist - primarily most of the universe is not only uninhabitable, but it is down right, extremely dangerous. I'm 95% sure there are no creators because nearly all that I know and have experienced can be explained in terms of natural processes, what is left to me is only unknown because there has not been sufficient time to explain it all. On top of this, there are a small number of scientifically based "creation" scenarios - which implies the universe could have been created, but not by a god. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jun Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 Could you define 'Gods'? I took "Gods" to mean a postulated preternatural or supernatural being, with significant power, worshipped, thought holy or divine, and held in high regard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 The limit of 'Creator God' eliminates most Pantheons, since Zeus/Jupiter didn't forge the heavens, neither did Bhraman, or many of the other 'Gods' (Odin?) The Egyptian Gods didn't build much by the way of the Universe, either. In many respects there are very few 'creator' Gods who remained involved with their creation... it was like the 'lesser' Gods really didn't do much except mate with each other, kill each other (with greater or lesser permanent effects), and screw around with humans. Hence I wanted to know are we defining Gods as 'creators only' or the pumped up humans... TBH, is something akin to a god like being exists, it'll be more H.P. Lovecraft (just less warm and cuddly) than Jehovah et al... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
☆ TexasFreethinker ☆ Posted October 14, 2007 Author Share Posted October 14, 2007 I adjusted the options in the second question to make it clear that we're considering only creator gods. Hopefully I did that in a way that didn't invalidate the existing poll responses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 Ta. I've voted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fallenleaf Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 I am 100% certain the Christian God does not exist. But, the nonexistence of "any" God... that I am only 95% certain. I remain open to new evidence, if some should arise to provide insight in the matter. Until that day, I don't believe in any God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RankStranger Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 99% on both. I'm not 100% sure that I'm sitting in a chair right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedah Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 100% on the christian God. Blatantly violates all laws of reason. The bible is no more philosophically deep and insightfull then writings by shake spear or Socrates. One would kind of expect God to be a more intelligent writer then his own creations. As for no Gods period, as in no diestic God. We will never really know. Maybe the laws of physics demand it like Einstein thought. Hence IM agnostic. Im about 70% sure no "clockmaker god" exists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Jeff Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 I'm 100% certain that the christian god doesn't exist because his existence is impossible and because the book he allegedly wrote is so fallible and full of errors. But, I believe that there probably is a Creator God of some sort because it's so exceedingly unlikely, IMHO, that this universe and this world exist in all of their complexity and beauty for no reason and no purpose. I also have serious doubts that "evolution explains it all", as fundamentalist atheists like Dawkins commonly assert. That takes evolution out of the realm of science and into the realm of religion, where it doesn't belong, in my opinion. I've also studied the human body extensively in my classes at school, and the more I learn the more the notion that we just happened to evolve by chance with no prior planning involved courtesy of a blind, unintelligent guide called "natural selection" seems absurd. So, I'm basically a Deist these days, though to me "who god is" remains undefined, and is probably unknowable. And I'm not religious about it. That's just where I'm at right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurari Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 I am 100% certain that the Christian God doesn't exist, because it makes no bloody sense. As for other gods, I define a" god" as being an intelligent being, and honestly, I see no evidence of an intelligent being having his/her/it's hand in anything. I'm open to the idea of deisism and perhaps some kind of cosmic "Force" out there, but if that's the case, it's not something I really concern myself with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 I answered 99% certain on the non-existence of the Christian God, because to state I believe anything 100% goes against a core philosophy I hold to. Everything is on a scale of less certain to more certain. I put my skepticism of that at the top of that scale. I answer 95% on the second question because I fancy a mythology that some scientist in another universe deliberating created a self-contained universe in his lab and what we live in is the result. Of course because it's a separate universe, we cannot interact with him and he is no God as our primitive ancestors imagined. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
☆ TexasFreethinker ☆ Posted October 14, 2007 Author Share Posted October 14, 2007 I answered 99% certain on the non-existence of the Christian God, because to state I believe anything 100% goes against a core philosophy I hold to. Everything is on a scale of less certain to more certain. I put my skepticism of that at the top of that scale. That's basically how I see it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 that pesky 1% admits too much underpinning insanity in the Universe... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShackledNoMore Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 Well, I was about to comment that I wasn't 100% sure of practically anything after reading the OP, but I see that the point has already gotten attention. (I might buy into the cogito ergo sum argument and claim 100% certainty that *** I *** exist, but I won't vouch for my own sanity, including this compelling perception--and nearly total certainty--I have that I'm sitting in a chair.) Just to split a hair, though, it's not 1% that causes the problem--it's considerably less. Particularly for the question of the xian god, any amount short of 100%, while technically non-zero, is infinitesimal. I would say something like I was 99.99999999999% sure, but I could take no meaningful stab at how many 9's to put after the decimal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 Just because the individual is irrational doesn't make the Hermetic 'as above, so below' true... or, rather, the converse, being true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWIM Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 I voted 100% that xtian god does not exist. If the word "christian" was not in the sentence my answer would have been different. The christian god, is also the jewish god, since christians use the OT. There is ZERO doubt in my mind that god, as defined by christians, cannot possibly exist. However, is there *any* god, passive or otherwise? I don't know at all, and cannot give any degree of percentage on believe or disbelieve because I remain neutral on the subject until some form of direct evidence is found. In speculation I feel there *may* be one, but it would definitely not be the jealous/vengeful/unjust/sadistic god of the bible. Believing at *any* level, even one percent of bible god, is like believing, at least one percent, that the sun or the moon is a deity... Totally primitive, caveman-like belief that one day future historians will marvel in wonder as to how a thinking person would ever even so much as entertain the thought as anything more then mythology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted October 15, 2007 Share Posted October 15, 2007 There is no option for I don't care, or I don't know, or it's not important to me. And that is where I stand. I have some pretty strong opinions on the matter but making statements--I'm just not up to committing myself. I've been "committed" all my life and got nothing but grief in return. I am now committed to being me. That does not include decisions about metaphysics or commitments about how the universe came into existence. There's more important stuff such as how to live this one life I know I've got. I'll worry about the next one when I get there. If you hadn't put in the word about this being a scientific experiment I might have voted crazy just to see what others voted, but that would skew the stats like crazy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution_beyond Posted October 15, 2007 Share Posted October 15, 2007 Could you define 'Gods'? Not easily! I purposely left that vague since there are so many definitions out there for both the christian god and other gods. For purposes of this poll let's assume a god, at a minimum, has the ability to have created the universe. What if he/she/it is the Universe - like the Universe itself is intelligent and nobody created it, it just grew like a living thing. That is the only kind of God that I could rationally believe in. I wanted to show that I thought it possible though unlikely that such a God existed - but the 'Creator' bit threw me off - I don't believe in a Creator at all. So I ended up ticking the middle one for the second question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution_beyond Posted October 15, 2007 Share Posted October 15, 2007 99% on both. I'm not 100% sure that I'm sitting in a chair right now. Nice :-) The philosopher in me loved that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraphicsGuy Posted October 15, 2007 Share Posted October 15, 2007 I am 100% certain that the Xian version of "God" does not exist at all. Whoever/whatever any "God" might be, he/she/it has been horribly misrepresented by Xianity especially. As for my second vote: 50-74% There's a decent chance that one or more creator gods exist, but I don't think they do Even though I wouldn't say "decent chance," just "chance." I don't think there is anything "out there," but I could very well be wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.B. Posted October 15, 2007 Share Posted October 15, 2007 Intelligent, omniscient, omnipotent creator gods don't inspire people to write bullshit like the Noah account. The logical and logistical fallacies present in that story are so numerous as to be laughable to the extreme. Hence, to believe in the Xtian god is, as Michael said, to believe in the god of the Jewish OT, which is to believe utter fucking nonsense was divinely inspired. Ix-nay on the ible-god-bay. I DO, however, as do others, believe that there is the possibility of a 'god' in the sense that there is an order to what we have that COULD have come from someONE or someTHING sentient and intentional in its efforts. I'm really not sure, which admission is a luxury I was forbidden to enjoy as a Xtian. What I am ABSOLUTELY positive of, when all is said and done, is the idea that we "are here" (in some sense; I am a Buddhist, after all... lol) and that we MUST make the best effort we each can to become the best and greatest WE that we can be, taking advantage of every scientific and emotional/relational discovery we make and using them to their fullest effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemon Posted October 15, 2007 Share Posted October 15, 2007 At this point, I can only say that I don't know and don't care if he exists or not. My only certainty is that the bible simply cannot be an inspired word of God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts