Agnosticism vs. Atheism

crashfrog It would seem that an impasse has been reached here. God is not properly defined with characteristics that humans as a whole agree upon.Is God impersonal or personal? Is God absolutely powerful or limited to some degree? Is God love or is He anger?As an atheist myself I decided that not only is there no good evidence but there is not even a remotely proper definition. The God of the Bible is so hopelessly human in his actions that I outright reject this book as a source(for defining God) and in many studies of other cultures I have found that most likely all Gods goddesses etc are social instruments put in place to help people in coping with death and our mortality.We are unable a lot of the time to handle the stress of aging and the loss of parents and friends and it would seem that a fair number of people need to hold onto an illusion of an afterlife so that pschologically they can maintain some control over their life.It is not hard to understand that humans feel lost and alone and WILL cling to beliefs and I agree that atheism does not offer any comfort.I eventually came to accept that life is temporary and it does no good to waste the short time we do have trying to feed the need of our egos and that I was not special and necessary.I lost the comfort of beliefs and gained the comfort of clarity.I now take time for my friends and family at the expense of work related tasks because it is more important that my children understand that life is not pusuit of career to establish whatever accumulation of property and intellect you desire but it is enjoying one anothers company and being truthful on points of the facts of life and death. When I die those who knew me can mourn but they cannot claim that they did not know me.
Atheism is not a disbelief in God but a release from the pursuit of folly.Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition thats troublesome. I.A.{Added blank lines between some of the paragraphs, to help readability - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 09-21-2003][This message has been edited by sidelined, 09-22-2003]

If we have a definition of God given to us that gives location and properties would there be any problem to verify through science that there is an actual existence of God? I do not mean where God is defined as an abstract(God is love)but as an entity? with characteristics that allow us to make statements of the abilities God supposedly possesses.For instance,God is,as far as I can tell, accepted as having created the universe.The ability to do so necessarily leads to the question by which means did he accomplish this.It seems to me ,also, that the accepted answer is through supernatural means.Here we have the crux of the problem,I believe,in that a definition of supernatural is not forthcoming that would suffice to offer any way for someone to have gleaned Gods' existence.Merriam webster defines supernatural asMain Entry: supernatural
Pronunciation: "s-p&r-'na-ch&-r&l, -'nach-r&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Medieval Latin supernaturalis, from Latin super- + natura nature
Date: 15th century
1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)Since supernatural relates to those items that are beyond laws of nature they would,I assume,not be amenable to the five senses or to any means of detection that was subject to the laws of nature.So God performed the act of creating a universe which,by definition,God is beyond.How do we account for this? Is there no evidence of the act of creation?How would we recognise it if we came across it? What biases must we overcome in order to arrive at a clear and unambiguous
acceptance of God as real? Now we have books written by men that give differing versions of history that point to a God but that none can define.Does this follow any pattern of logic?What good is it to say that we cannot disprove the existence of something because we haven't looked everywhere when what we are looking for,by definition, would not be locatable in the first place?These are just rambling thoughts and I am sure that more the learned than me will be able to poke holes in them but this is how we learn best."You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going,because you might not get there." Y.B.

Mark 24b,Then He would be amenble to scientific investigation.I have tried to get creationists to follow this thread however they never continue beyond this point.I guess such is the nature of faith.

Mark 24, I do not believe we are offtopic since this concerns the validity of agnostic/atheistic points of view.And I agree that God is off the radar screen of science if,and only if,God does not interact in any PHYSICAL way with the universe.This would mean he is incapable of being seen,heard,felt or otherwise sensed by biological organisms else he WOULD leave a trace that we could investigate.The lack of any trace of evidence could be explained if,we assume,God does NOT interact at anytime after 10*-43 sec. after creation of the universe or at a scale of greater than 10*-35 meters.I do not feel this would be in agreement with any standard description of God.And again I would ask as I have in other posts, Why is there no effort on the part of creation scientists to objectively search for supportive evidence?

Mark 24
"Or that we wouldn't understand it if we did, or that we simply haven't found the evidence that does exist...."If we look at this statement one is left with wondering why we couldn't understand it nor why the evidence does not exist since we are able to detect forces of both enormous strength and tremendous subtlety.The evidence does not even make it effects known upon the forces we do understand.Any force great enough to manipulate the strong nuclear force would leave its stamp.The difference between the strength of gravity and electromagntism is on the order of 10*43It also goes to the core of religious texts in that God interacts at a physical level with different individuals.In order to do so he must use physical laws.[This message has been edited by sidelined, 09-28-2003]

Mark 24,
Yes that is correct "if" God merely created precusor conditions and only tweaked the vacuum energy perhaps he could indeed be looked over.In this respect we could be agnostic since we have put parameters around Gods capabilities. In other words we have begun to "define" Him. Yet the difficulty still remains for us to not invoke unecessary possibilites that are mere speculation since we have no way of determining whether this point of view is correct or another, ludicrous, position is.(Not to state that the former is ludicrous)And the people who come to these pages to argue for God do not share this version of your limited God but argue that He walks and talks and performs miracles.They further state that there is a "scientific"explanation for God. They have yet to show this explanation.