Atheism vs Theism vs Agnosticism vs Gnosticism

Do you believe in God, or do you believe that there is no God*? Just how sure are you? Depending on your answer, you may be an atheist or a theist along the spectrum of surety with agnosticism on one end and gnosticism on the other.

(*Now, someone explain to me whether Zen Buddhists believe in God.)

Confused? You're not alone, but thanks to Pablo Stanley (previously on Neatorama), we now have a handy dandy guide to know what the hell you are:

So, which quadrant do you belong to?





I consider myself just as atheist... believing with almost absolute certainty that there is no god.

I don't like the distinction betewen the doubtfulness of the message "I might be wrong" and sniffyness of "that is just dumb"...
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I fall exactly in the center of all four in that I do not know (or claim any ability to know/deduce) for certain (nor does anyone else currently alive on this planet) if there is or is not a god and I even have no claims on the veracity of that position as itself is in no way supported/refuted by any evidence presented to me in almost 45 years.
I am a true Agnostic. I don't know and it is impossible to know until I die.
Living humans arguing about the nature of god are like blind men arguing about the color of a bird whose wings they heard flapping nearby, when there is also the possibility it was nothing but a gust of wind.
Shut up, live your life by the golden rule and you'll find out when you die.
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Everybody should have picked one of the 'agnostic' options since nobody really knows, in the 'I can prove it to you' sense, that a god does (or does not) exist. Then you're just left with theists and atheists - you either believe in god(s) or you don't. Very straightforward.
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Before I can answer this question, we'll need to define "god." Are we talking about the Xian god of the Bible? Then no, I am absolutely certain that it doesn't exist, because it can't. There are too many logical contradictions, and definite statements that don't jive with observations of the real world. Are we talking about some vague spiritual essence that permeates the universe, but is somehow undetectable by science? I'll admit that such a thing might exist, but if there is no evidence to support it, then there's not much point in believing in it, is there?
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One way to define a god is a thing that people worship. Beauty, youth, power, love, wealth, justice, art, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, fairness, health, etc. - take your choice which you worship, but choose well and thoughtfully.

If looked at that way, then there are no atheists, just some people who don't recognize what they worship. Christianity and its faith-based cousins mangled this view, and now we live in very confused times were rejecting a certain type of Abrahamic creator god is seen as atheism. But my views are old-fashioned here.
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I think it all depends on one's definition of "god", and what we want to do with it / why we bother with it. Spooky thing that created the universe? Logical absurdity - what created that kind of god? All-powerful, all-good, omniscient, omni-present conscious entity independent of space-time? I'm sure we'd have to prune off a few of those qualities due to the Problem of Evil (why is there evil in the world if such a being exists?).
Are there human cultural archetypes that humans can use to psych themselves up to do extraordinary feats of strength, endurance, creativity or intellect? Sure, and if they didn't exist we'd invent them - super-memes, Big Ideas that have proved useful to us. That to me is a god. I don't worship it like Xtians worship theirs - they're archetypes, they're not an emotionally needy supreme being - but I can call them into me to get me through bad times or optimise my good times. That's what I think they're for. I think we have a capacity and a need for creativity & narrative which logic alone doesn't fulfil. This is the realm of dreams & visions, our cerebral defrag routine, making sense of the illogical by creative narrative means. You can choose to believe the illogical while not throwing out the logical - I can say I believe in Mercury or Thor or Papa Legba, and be able to picture them & really believe in them with my figurative brain, but with my logical brain still know that gravity pulls you down, electricity powers my Mac, and water's wet. The trouble with religion is when you let the figurative rule the logical.
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