who knows?

Originally posted by knightmeister
The only way I could come to believe in god would be by purely blind faith. STARMAN

And I accept this is how you feel at the moment . This is probably what leads you to conclude that if this is true for you then it must be true for theists as well , therefore it's logical for you to assume that all theists are merely indulging in blind faith. Howev ...[text shortened]... theist and Theist are sometimes being true to themselves in their beliefs , at the same time?

This doesn't make much sense to me. Of course I allow for the probability that a theist might actually hold the position they do because god seems pretty damn likely to them. How could I hold otherwise?

Atheism is not a system of beliefs, it is just a denial of the existence of god, that's an important distinction to make and as such there's nothing to be true to. There's not enough evidence to suggest to me that god might exist, if I was presented with such evidence then I'd cease to be an atheist.

Originally posted by knightmeister
Funny, that's exactly how I see you.


I'm not ridiculing you am I? I'm simply presenting the idea that there maybe something that you have yet to know or understand that could shed new light on your beliefs. It would be foolish of any Theist to think that they could never genuinly lose their faith , but it also works the other way.......

My position remains as it is only until enough evidence for god's existence is presented. Any weak atheist should tell you the same.

Originally posted by Agerg
[b]Like our belief in any other claim outside of pure deduction, our belief in god should be basically probabilistic.

It should be logical, coherrant, empirically justified, and testable...Magic friends do not have these properties (unless you limit yourself to the *subjective* viewpoints of theists.)[/b]

Well, within our capacity to observe, magic friends do not have these properties. Since my capacity to observe is the upper limit for my knowledge of the external world, I don't have any magic friends, ie I am an atheist. However, because of the limitations of observation, empirical justification or "disproof" do not perfectly match truth and falsehood of the statements we use to model the external world, so it's more correct to say "I have no reason or explanatory need to believe in god and thus will act as though god does not exist" than it is to say "God does not exist".

As for subjective viewpoints, I defy anyone to have an idea about the external world which is not subjective.