Posted: Sep 11, 2017 12:19 am
Wortfish wrote:romansh wrote:
While you might not be an atheist ... you do have similar atheistic positions to Greek and Roman gods and no doubt Norse one's too? Do you not? You likely think they are false gods, as I likely will think yours is.
Just because a person is a monotheist does not make him an atheist with respect to other deities. Theism means believing in one or more gods.
I never said it did. But your behaviour towards that god would be very similar if not indistinguishable to that of an atheist.
Theism is a bit more tricky ... it has two broad meanings like atheism. It could mean anyone who believes in a god regardless of type. But it also has a specific definition of someone who believes in a personal god. For example I would have a lot more in common with a deist as opposed to a theist, at least in this sense.
Wortfish wrote:Personally I describe myself as an agnostic ... in that, that (for me) is how I handle knowledge as opposed to god or God which as far as I can tell does not impact my life. Knowledge or perhaps its lack does impact my life. I am an atheist in the same way I am an aphilatelist.
Traditionally, agnostics were people who genuinely didn't know if God existed whereas atheists were convinced that God did not and could not exist. Both lacked belief in God, but atheists were the more certain of their position. I don't see why many of the atheist posters here are behaving like politicians and are sitting on the fence.
While agnostics have been around for at least two millennia, Huxley when he coined the term did not limit it specifically to god. He included other paranormal phenomena in the term. Again personally I am comfortable to use the term outside of the original framework. For example I could say I am agnostic about life out there in the universe in some other galaxy.