Percy is a Deist - Now what's the difference between a deist and an atheist?

Hey Moose, As another resident Deist, let me reply.The rational conclusion based on evidence is agnosticism, the uncertainty of existence of god/s.Atheists are on one side of the line of agnosticism, deists are on the other. This may be a fine line, but the distinction is real, like the difference between negative numbers and positive numbers, with the zero position being your fine line.The atheist believes there is no evidence of god/s and that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence (all A is B, B therefore A logical fallacy).The deist believes that god/s is/are essentially unknowable, that all evidence points to the way the natural world functions as created, and all we can understand is how it works.Enjoy.

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So what does the atheist believe? If the atheist believes that if any clockmaker exists that it must be a bad clockmaker, citing evidence of bad designs, doesn't that make them closer to the christian than to the deist?Enjoy.

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Thanks Nighttrain,I wasn't aware that you had lakes in the middle of australia You may not know.atheist: there is no evidence of god/sdeist: all people all over the world have religionsatheist: that is not evidence of god/s,deist: it is evidence of common spiritualityatheist: the religions are different, some vastly differentdeist: people all over the world have similar religious experiences, those are interpreted within the context of their cultureatheist: those are hallucinationsand on it goesEnjoy.

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Thank you Buz for your understanding. Isn't that what genesis says?Enjoy.

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Curiously contradicts or is contradicted by Unless that 0.1% is more important than the other 99.9% - in which case it isn't 0.1% ...Or the rivalry has nothing to do with opposition, but with the appeal to people of reason.Enjoy.

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Strangely contradicts or is contradicted by Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : twoway street

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If 0.1% theism is the biggest rival of theism, then why wouldn't 0% theism be bigger? If atheism is not a bigger rival then that small difference is critical. The problem here, is that the universe was created at the start to cause "everything that happened since said start" and thus it is also included in the package. Yet we only know one very small portion of one part of the curriculum vitae, and you assume theists know the rest?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : rest

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Yes, it was a major factor in framing the Declaration of Independence and the religious freedom in the constitution. You can call it whatever you like, it is, after all, your opinion.Enjoy

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Ah. You believe there is no "B" that is not "A" ... one wonders "why so friggin confident?"Enjoy.

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Some may, some may not, however those that do would only use a heavily modified version (no miracles, no revealed truths). It is more a philosophy of belief than a religion, there is no central "church" and no "dogma" to follow. Each is pretty much on their own.For me, personally, it seems that the truth lies somewhere between Buddhism and Pantheism. It seems to me that the enlightenment of Buddha is similar to the prophets of other religions, and that this is also seen in Mahatma Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau. This state of heightened spiritual awareness exists in all religions, is common to all cultures.The way I see it is that religions have formed afterward, by the followers of enlightened people, and those followers have interpreted things according to their cultures and their understanding of reality. Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, all had followers that created the religions based on their interpretations of these people.Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns reach the same state of spiritual awareness in tests that compare them, and I would not be surprised to find sufi dervishes also compare the same. In native america we had spirit walks, and in australia there is the walk-about.Enjoy.

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I've been around this issue several times with Modulus and others. Simply put, if you know all {A} and all {B} and you can show that {A} == {B} then you can reasonably conclude that there is no {B} that is not{A}. The degree of confidence you can have in a conclusion that {B} = {A} is the degree you have confidence in your knowledge of {A} and {B}. That depends on what you define as "fairies" - are they visions by people who interpret them as fairies because that fits their culture (and there is certainly evidence of people believing in fairies)?Then yes, fairies probably exist in some form: visions are common. Some people dismiss them as hallucinations, and other don't. But if you are talking about people seeing fairies, there is evidence that people see fairies - they just may not really understand what they see due to limitations in their understanding of reality.The issue is one of open-minded skepticism, applying both to the question at hand. Does the Loch Ness monster exist? It is possible that someone saw something they didn't understand, and somebody else embellished the story, but that the original sighting was real. Some people feel they have eliminated the possibility of a large plesiosaur like animal, but that doesn't mean they have dealt with the original vision. This is called the Ad lapidem fallacy, coupled with a straw man. Nobody is claiming that little green men live in toilets as part of any spiritual belief.Instead every culture has spiritual beliefs, ones interpreted within their culture but displaying similarities that transcend cultures.Enjoy.

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Thanks Rahvin, Neither is deism, it's only as you move away from the line that the distinction becomes more clear - either theistic or antitheistic. It is more of a spectrum than a quantum phenomena. I have a friend that describes himself as an apatheist - he just doesn't care whether there is or is not god/s. Technically speaking we have evidence of religious beliefs in all cultures. We don't have evidence of faith in invisible pink unicorns or tiny green toilet goblins in any cultures (although one might wonder when watching TV ads) And yet this does not mean that your pen has disappeared from the haunts of men, carted off by invisible pink unicorns or tidy-bowl goblins. This just means that the pen is not in the area of {A} that you have confirmed is {B}. The confidence you can have is proportional to the confidence you have that you know all {A} and all {B}. Which, curiously, explains why you, and many people, make the choice you do, not that the choice is one based purely on reason. Because I am open-minded about spirituality, I've had spiritual experiences, and I remain skeptical of all claims of positive knowledge in this area.Enjoy.

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This is equivocating on the issue. Without the original sighting there is no Nessie story, it does not matter how much the "religion" of Nessie has evolved from the first sighting, for the first sighting to be valid. Some may dismiss the evidence as hallucinations, or drugs, tell themselves it is just a common brain pattern, but that doesn't really answer the question.And this also answers your Message 36Enjoy.

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That would be one interpretation. Another would be that it has the same desired result, a species developing increasing intelligence and awareness, although the species could change, the location could change.Either way, I could also counter your assumed numbers by saying that in 0.1% of the time, the deist god/s did 100% of the work (job done, no need to interfere) while the theist god in 99.9% of the time has only accomplished 50% of the work (job half done, gotta keep adding things, redesigning things, scratch and start over).Enjoy.

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Missing the point. If god is unknowable then how do I know which god? How does anyone? The real question is not the probability of a single defined god but of the existence of any god.Now, do we get a "creationist" probability calculation based on made up numbers to cover unknowns? As opposed to dogmatic beliefs in absolute truths, yes. If we can't know, all we have are tentative approximations.Enjoy.

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