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

Sorry if this is getting off topic, but I don't really see how the fact that different people experience the world in the same ways is much evidence for anything. When different people take the same hallucigonice drug, it affects their perception of the world in similar ways (set and setting permitting), and many people throughout history have interpreted this fact as meaning that the drug enabled different people to perceive the same, hidden aspects of reality.I'm guessing you'd agree that this view is incorrect. People all have essentually similar brains, so the psychoactive chemical simply causes the same type of altered perceptions. Why should altered states of consciousness not induced by drugs be considered differently? That the meditations of the Catholic nun, the Buddhist monk and the reductionist materialist can all produce the same effects says nothing more than that people all have human brains.And are the teachings of these various enlightened folk all so similar? I don't see how you could argue that except by cherry-picking near universal standards of morality like reciprocity; and dismissing much that is contradictory as the work of followers, rather than the original prophet. Is there any real reason for doing so, excpet to support your argument?

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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.

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It's entirely possible that there was a genuine original vision that inspired the Loch Ness Monster stories. Still, if you establish that there is no large, pleisiosaur-like animal, then you have established that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist. 'Loch Ness Monster' doesn't refer to the original sighting that may have inspired the stories. 'Loch Ness Monster' refers to the subject of the stories.

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The atheist believes it is purely rational to believe there is/are no god/s, they believe that absence of evidence is indeed not just evidence of absence, but sufficient proof of absence. They believe that they know all {A} such that there is no possible {A} that is not {B}.

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Who, exactly, is 'the atheist'? At the risk of repeating what has been said many times, all atheism requires is a lack of belief in God. The above is clearly a strawman of the position advocated by most (or at least a sizeable proportion of) atheists on this forum.I certainly do not believe I know all {A}; and yet - like everybody else - I do not require a rigorous proof before I will believe in the existence of thelaptop I'm typing on; nor before I will say I do not believe in the evil monkey in my closet.To return to your Loch Ness analogy, and what I assume you were trying to put across, then no - of course demonstrating the God of the Torah to be a myth would not demonstrate all concepts of deity to be a myth. No matter how many gods we dismissed, we haven't dismissed all possible concepts of god. But this is simply an argument for agnosticism, and doesn't really tell us anything of value. We all know that we cannot describe the real world with the same certainty we can prove a mathematical theorem, but so what? You can't prove you're not a brain in a jar, either. What support does all this offer for the idea of a deity?In summary, to qualify as an atheist, one has to lack belief in God. One does not need to be unshakeably certain that no concept anyone, anywhere described as God could or does exist.Edited by caffeine, : To add summary.

I think it's wrong to look at these definitions of atheist and agnostic as if they're contradictory. One can easily be both, as I suppose you could be an agnostic theist or, as yourself, an agnostic deist. 'Belief' and 'certain knowledge' are not synonomous. If I ask two friends which one of them ate my last muffin, and both blame the other, I may well believe Friend A, because he's generally more trustworthy and doesn't really like that flavour of muffin very much. This doesn't mean I know for certain that Friend B took the muffin.