Originally posted by: chusteczka
Originally posted by: irishScott
Originally posted by: chusteczka
Originally posted by: irishScott
How can you look at something like the Universe, with it's laws, rules, dimensions, shapes, and ORDER and deny, with absolute certainty, that there isn't a higher being behind it?
... Just in the general "God concept" sense, how can you deny it?
It is not so much the situation that a "God concept" is denied since this concept provides little relevance to life the way I live it.
I do not deny any god's existence. I just do not give the thought any importance in my life.
To deny a god's existence, I would first have to consider such a concept to be important.
That would make you agnostic?
I live my life by reason as well. This reason leads me to be confident in the existance of a God who wishes us to be moral, among a FEW other things (check out my wiki link).
This is interesting.
agnostic
?noun
- a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
- a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
atheist
?noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
These definitions have never seemed to apply to my lack of understanding of the concept of a god. To me, it seems as if these definitions were created by someone who believes in a god and must find a method to classify those who do not likewise believe. For me, the concept of god is not a binary concept with only two possibilities; belief or disbelief.
I suppose, my lack of validating the concept would most likely represent a NULL value. That is, neither equal nor unequal. I, personally, neither believe nor disbelieve in the concept of a god.
I further suppose the first definition of an agnostic would classify me but it still does not feel right to me. Without a believer telling me that I should believe, I do not really care about the issue much at all.
EDIT:
I have found that Buddhism and Shintoism come closest to my more educated understanding of life. The concentration more on life's energy and man's philosophic understanding of life rather than a belief in a higher being. However, one who believes in the concept of a god would probably define life's energy as a higher, god-like being.
My term, "more educated understanding", refers to my own understanding of life in comparison of before learning about religious philosophy to after learning about religious philosophy.