Answer for: Do you adhere to, or identify with, any particular belief system/religion?
#1 Atheism
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I've made my decision
Don't want your religion
No more church-bound prison
Or, Jerry Falwell - television.
D.R.I.
Atheism is not a belief system, but rather, a lack of one.
I _believe_ that there is no God.
I believe I don't know what to believe. I tend to think there is not much chance of a God being around. But, so many intelligent people swear there is and have said so down the centuries that I find it hard to scoff too hard. It would be much easier if the only people who believed in God were evangelical, stupid, bible bashers with limited IQ, but the thing is there are intellectuals and academics out there who truly believe. I find that truly incredible and it is for that reason that I do not dismiss religion out of hand. There are even physicists out there who believe - now that is fascinating. What is it that persuades them, I'd truly like to know? Why is the God fairy tale so much more convincing than the Father Christmas fairy tale to these people?
"so many intelligent people swear there is and have said so down the centuries that I find it hard to scoff too hard."
Such as...?
http://www.grupthink.com/topic/11236
I'll do a bit of research and come up with a list of five from earlier times and five from now. Bit busy today doing physical, "real life" type things, so likely to be tomorrow or the next day.
This message will self destruct after this sentence... Trying to define or identify God is one of the greatest mistakes. It is the process that is God. For some, God is a Buddha, a Christ, an Allah... But as soon as the assessment is made is when God is lost. For we then live in the world of ideas and not in the place of now.
If I could define God in words I would call God "NOW".
I said to Holotone that I would name some intelligent Christians as I found it amazing that academics could believe in at all.
I came up with two (because I could not be bothered to write up more) and posted them on the intelligent Christian topic.
I named two scientists who are alive now and working, as I don't think it is fair to name scientists or artists or the famous of the past who lived in a cultures and times when God was almost universally accepted. For example, I could name Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I - both believers and both intelligent, but they lived in believing times.
holotone - "I _believe_ that there is no God."
moltenlava - "I don't believe in God."
Huge difference.
It's not a belief. It's the absence of belief. It's looking at all the emperical evidence and saying to oneself, "There is nothing to give any indication that what that group over there claims is at all true. Therefore, I don't believe it." Those groups are the ones making the claims. The non-believer is not making any claims. The universe is not making any of the clams either. Therefore, the non-believer has NO beliefs concerning the claims of those groups....And, no, this isn't just a matter of silly semantics.
"I believe I don't know what to believe. I tend to think there is not much chance of a God being around. But, so many intelligent people swear there is and have said so down the centuries that I find it hard to scoff too hard. It would be much easier if the only people who believed in God were evangelical, stupid, bible bashers with limited IQ, but the thing is there are intellectuals and academics out there who truly believe. I find that truly incredible and it is for that reason that I do not dismiss religion out of hand. There are even physicists out there who believe - now that is fascinating. What is it that persuades them, I'd truly like to know? Why is the God fairy tale so much more convincing than the Father Christmas fairy tale to these people? " - - silverspeeder
All of those academic intellectual types from centuries past lived at times where dissent was not tolerated. Vocal dissent usually ended in torture and death. So, you're not going to find many folks going on record and jeopardizing their lives. Plus, information for or against the hypothesis was scarce, nowhere as accessible as it is today. Not a lot of evidence either way to go on. But, I was very suprised to hear that folks like both Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were not fond of Christian doctrine. They believed in Pantheism, I think. Or, the other term that I can't think of right now....That God began the universe, but had nothing to do with it after it started.
A very small segment of today's academic/scientific community are believers. But, a large portion of that segment were raised in religious households. Very hard to unlearn things already ingrained. But, there's also cases that are exceptions to this rule. To that, I say that everyone's brains are wired differently and a bunch of evidence is pointing to the conclusion that a proclivity towards religious belief is hardwired and inherited.