If you had to choose between atheist or theist...

I think the burden of proof lies with the deity. Much as I dislike New Age ("rhymes with sewage!" a friend always adds), here's a recommendation again: Deepak Chopra has written interestingly about how the idea of god arises out of different human circumstances.

For many who are atheists or agnostics, but who perceive the interplay of the strands of life within what might be called a unifying principle, social, Sunday-religion is anathema. ...as is the use to which spirituality is put by the state and by hierarchical religious institutions having piles of worldly goods and promoting narrow social and political goals. Particularly now, at this period in our history, any discussion of "god" is tainted by the commercial and political uses of the concept. So when people click on the "atheist" button, they may not be denying spirituality but rather distancing themselves from corruption and hubris in religious institutions.

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Tartarin

Yes! Well said.

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Apathy am I, atheist here, but not proselytizing for it.

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Tartar, I'm not sure what you mean by "spirituality," but I don't believe in any gods. My "spirit" dies when my body dies. c.i.

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I always find it interesting when different people look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions.

I believe in God.

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Hmm. . . . I tend to identify myself as a nonchristian agnostic but having to choose I guess I'd go with atheist. . . . does theist only apply to certain religions? I just don't tend to think the existance or nonexistance of God, gods, or ultimate something really matters all that much because no matter what I believe things are the way they are and the universe isn't going to rearrange itself for me. I'm going to live the same way I live no matter what label I identify myself with.

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Since this is the thread that won't die -- I guess I gotta come back and say: Agnosticism is the only way to go.

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I go with Borges -- entirely -- Midnight. Am very doubtful about the existence of linear time.

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Ci and I seem to be in the same camp, hi, CI.

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Jim, That's known as "subjectivity." Wink

c.i.

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Excellent >:-) I shall look forward to your reply in my "Does there exist a deity?" thread... ;-)

williamhenry3 wrote:

I am definitely a theist:

The light of God surrounds us;
The love of God enfolds us:
The power of God protects us;
The presence of God watches over us.
Wherever we are, God is.
--James Dillet Freeman

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Grr. The smilie machine doesn't recognise the generic "evil grin"...

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@Craven de Kere,

It is not the definition that counts but the substance, it is not a matter of choice but reasoning.
Theist wants you to believe in things with no explanation and atheist are more rational, they evaluate the issue and provide you with the alternative.
If you are a reasonable person , you line to believe what is understandable and not what they tell you DON'T WORRY, THIS IS RIGHT

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@Galli,

So, who do you believe, Einstein, who once wrote …. “The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence” (Ibid. 46).

Albert Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself a "religious nonbeliever." In other words, he, like so many of us, did not believe in the mystical religious rubbish as taught by the churches.

Spinozism is the monist philosophical system of Baruch Spinoza that defines "God" as a singular self-subsistent substance, with both matter and ‘THOUGHT’ being attributes of such.

Does the non-existent have the attribute of “THOUGHT”?

Or do you believe the atheist Stephen Hawking. who said, it's my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe, in his final book he wrote; I think (I think being the operative words here) “the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing.”

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@The Anointed,

The Anointed wrote:

So, who do you believe, Einstein, who once wrote …. “The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence” (Ibid. 46).

Albert Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself a "religious nonbeliever." In other words, he, like so many of us, did not believe in the mystical religious rubbish as taught by the churches.

Spinozism is the monist philosophical system of Baruch Spinoza that defines "God" as a singular self-subsistent substance, with both matter and ‘THOUGHT’ being attributes of such.

Does the non-existent have the attribute of “THOUGHT”?

Or do you believe the atheist Stephen Hawking. who said, it's my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe, in his final book he wrote; I think (I think being the operative words here) “the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing.”

Albert Einstein, as are most thinking people, was an agnostic. So was Stephen Hawking. So was Richard Feynman. So is Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Get over yourself, Phony.

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@Frank Apisa,

Normal people know that Einstein wrote that one can not look at the universe and deny a designer.

And the atheist Stephen Hawking wrote in his final book; "There is no God. No one directs the universe,"

And some idiot comes along and says that they are both agnostics. Ha, Haa, Haaa,

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@The Anointed,

I wouldnt worry about it, Einstein, like Darwin, was wrong on a number of things

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@The Anointed,

The Anointed wrote:

Normal people know that Einstein wrote that one can not look at the universe and deny a designer.

And the atheist Stephen Hawking wrote in his final book; "There is no God. No one directs the universe,"

And some idiot comes along and says that they are both agnostics. Ha, Haa, Haaa,

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

“My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.”

Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.

In his book on Stephen Hawking, “Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang, and God, Henry F. Schaefer III, writes:

Now, lest anyone be confused, let me state that Hawking strenuously denies charges that he is an atheist. When he is accused of that he really gets angry and says that such assertions are not true at all. He is an agnostic or deist or something more along those lines. He's certainly not an atheist and not even very sympathetic to atheism.

You are a phony...and I am thoroughly enjoying schooling you.

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@Frank Apisa,

einstein was a kind of IDer but he more allowed that the universe was "programmed" by forces that he had no iea about. Jut becaue the name Einstein is stuck onto something, be aware that hewas a gifted human being with his own foibles an silly beliefs. His analogies about a "god" were as you stated, that of a commited agnostic.
I always used Darwin as an xample, of being rong in a big way that doesnt rally interfere with your basic lesson plan. In reality his own hypothesis , his THEORY of NATURAL SELECTION would collapse merely under the **** he said about how a heritable trait would disappear (primarily by "dilution" after several generations)> So Darwin really required all his mutants to have "refreshed the heritable trait into each NEW generation.
Darwin knew **** all about genetics. So too, Einstein knew squat about the world of the very small and how it affects the world f the very large.

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@farmerman,

Darwin knew **** all about genetics. So too, Einstein (One of the greatest of all scientist) knew squat about the world of the very small, but farmerman knows everything about everything. Ah, good heavens, that man cracks me up.

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If you had to choose between atheist or theist...

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