do you believe in God?
 

A real quick survey, feel free to elaborate on your view as much as you want, or just put an answer up. Im curious how it stands, this is a site that seems to have an association of being dominated by atheists or the anti-religious, but my feeling is that the majority here believe in God - but we will see

And by "God" I dont mean necessarily Allah, or Jehovah, or Yeshua pr any specific diety... just do you believe in one supreme creator who has power over all things....

and if this is already posted I apologise, but I couldnt see it

No, as I said in an other Thread I see the concept of "god" as highly irrational.
“Religion is an insult to human dignity.”

Good simple question. And rather timely ina weird sort of way.
Interesting how the responses are 50/50 (at least tonight they are)!

PS - My God wants me to be totally happy with life.
Therefore I am glad to be visiting my friends here... :)

Absolutely I believe in a God.

Any specific faith... no, not as such.

But yes, I do believe in God.

My perception of TFP at large was that the majority believed in God, as such, but did not subscribe to any particular religion. Of course, we have a fairly significant compliment of atheists and agnostics, but there are also a number of Christians and assorted believers. 50-50 sounds about right to be.

Wow, no third option for us agnostics?

I neither believe nor disbelieve.

I honestly don't care if God exists or not. The only thing I believe is that you don't need religion to have a good foundation of morals and values to live your life by. Dunno if that makes me agnostic, or actually atheist. I think if God does by some odd chance exist, that he is unnecessary. So yep.

I would point out that you may not get a 'representative sample' of the TFP by posting here on the philosophy board, as this is a board not neccessarily visitied by the majoriity of TFPers (read the threads, you tend to find the same names appearing).

I have a really hard time believing that there is this "man" sitting on a chair with long white hair and a beard waving his staff saying "you're coming up here with me," and "nope, you're headed down there, buster". To simplify the basis for my non-belief. I believe that what you give out to the world will come back to you, but I make my decisions on what I feel is right for me and others around me, not whether it will help me in an after-life. And, again, that's just the simplified version.

i neither believe nor disbelieve...the question of "god" has no particular interest for me.
from within the judeo-christian frame, which i was raised in and which to a certain degree i cannot escape, i think pascal was right---on its own terms, christianity posits a god that human understanding cannot access, cannot know at all. nietzsche, for that matter, was also right in his repetition of pascal.

so it follows that god is simply a noun--a peculiar type of proper noun that does not name but which can be invested in as if it did.

i think the noun exists, as an object and as a peculiar type of proper noun that does not name but which can be invested in as if it did.

The idea of "god" just shifts all the tough questins into a nice box called "faith".

It doesn't actually answer everything.

Bt mainly I do not belive because I have never had an experience that made me believe - nothing I have ever seen or done or heard of has left me feeling that it couldn't have happened as a result of the action of physics, chemistry etc.

I was neither here nor there

bit of an illogical statement, do you not have to naturally fall into one of the camps - since one automatically negates the other and there seems to be room for only a yes or a no answer.

I know I'm going to regret asking this

If I flipped a coin, but didn't show you the result, and then asked you "do you believe that this coin landed heads up?", what would you answer?

How you answer would really comes down to how you interpret the words (as do many 'philosophical' problems). One approach could be:

If I don't believe "the coin landed heads up", then I automatically believe "the coin did not land heads up". Since I have no reason to believe either "the coin landed heads up", nor "the coin did not land heads up", I insist that I neither believe nor disbelieve the statement.

Alternatively:

Just because I don't believe "the coin landed heads up" does not automatically imply that I believe "the coin did not land heads up". Again, I have no reason to believe that "the coin landed heads up", but disbelieving it this time around does not have any 'adverse consequences'. Hence I state outright that I don't believe that "the coin landed heads up" (without necessarily implying that I believe it landed tails up).


I think the latter use of language is clearer, and more closely mirrors logical reasoning ('I do not believe that X' is not equivalent to 'I believe that not X'. But many people would argue along the lines of the former, which also seems acceptable.

well, thats how I looked at it. Either you believe in God, or you dont... whether the lack of belief is a definite belief there is no God, or just that you dont really know... I dont see there is any real middle ground.

I suppose technically, if you aren't sure, then you don't believe, but the implication of answering no in that case, is that it skews the results of the poll. If we have equal numbers of believers, non-believers, and people who aren't sure, and those that aren't sure click no, then it's going to be heavily in favour of the no catagory. In fact, if you repeated this poll with the question "Do you believe there is no god", it would once again say no because of this. I really think it needs another option.

I don't know if this will make sense to anybody else, but I believe in A god, but I don't believe in THE god that is dominant in the world's beliefs today.
I don't believe in a single figure, but I do believe that there must be something governing the world, maybe not a diety, but something. If you look at it a certain way, the laws of physics could be considered a god, they govern the universe, and people certainly place a lot of faith that they will always react a certain way. What more is needed for them to be considered a higher power?

works for me.....heh

I believe that there is God. Only one, and He made the heavens and the earth. I believe that the heavens represent the realm that isn't man, and earth is the realm of man ( not 3rd rock from the star we call Sun ). I don't package that belief up with the label of any specific religion, though I do follow the Ten Commandments, for as a personal belief I choose to believe these are the direct words of God. I don't attend church/synagogue/mosque on a regular basis, in fact it has been over a year, yet I pray almost daily.

cheers
--tenchi

I have been trying to figure out the best way for me to answer this. I cannot. I cannot say "Yes, there is a god" and I don't feel I can say No, either. I have been arguing this with myself for quite some time now. I believe everything happens for a reason, and what comes around goes around. Not sure if that means I believe in a god. Maybe a higher force that encompasses all living creatures, but not one particular "being" in control. Hmmm.. Did I just answer the question without realizing it?

I couldn't agree more, and I know God exists in my life. There is nothing rational about a belief in God, IMO.

yeah i believe.

but sometimes wonder if god has given up and is trying elsewhere.

Zephyr66:

I agree almost on par with what you stated...if there was/is a God, then He was the one that made these rules, IMHO.

If there were no way to ever prove the result one way or the other, then the question "do you believe that this coin landed heads up?" would be one that I could not prove one way or the other and could only answer on faith alone, if there were nothing to suggest to me that it landed heads up I would answer the question "do you believe that this coin landed heads up?" - no,
but I would also answer the question "do you NOT believe that this coin landed heads up?" - no because there would be nothing to suggest it not land heads up.

do you believe in god? - no
do you not believe in god? - no

are not contradictory, so you can answer "no" to this poll, however Zyr is right and it means that the "no" will also mean "don't know"

I think some people get angrier with agnostics than with out and out atheists.

The agnostic has simply not come to any conclusions yet; the atheist and the believer have, for those having trouble with the concept.

Yeah, this was pretty much the point I was making. But I was also showing that people often do not use language in this sense, but rather in the sense described in the first example. E.G. take the common phrase "I don't believe it!". Hence the reason for the confusion about the poll.

No, I do not believe in "God". Not the god that is presented to me in the Holy Bible, anyway. I believe that God is a well perpetuated myth. Just as Ra, Anubis, Brigit, Morrigan, Odin, Tyr, Zeus, Apollo, Quetzlcoatl and Inti were all myths. I have yet to be presented with credible evidence to convince me otherwise.

Reminds me of a quote from Richard Dawkins:

"Modern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."

Same here.

Yes. I am blessed beyond belief :)

It seems logical to assume that something doesn't spring out of nothing but if there wasn't something how could one define nothing. If there is a god, what was here before it and does it have a creator as well. This stuff just doesn't make sense and we are (or at least I am) too ignorant and need to know a lot more about our existence and this universe before assigning responsibilty to a god.

I suspect that if there is such a thing as god that it is probably not one of the desert gods from the middle east, but who knows, maybe there is some truth in all of the world's religions since we seem so determined to want to believe in one. I left the poll unanswered which means none of the above.

You cannot conclude decisively on a matter in which there is no evidentiary proof for either side. It makes far more sense to avoid making a judgement until further evidence is presented, since this is not excactly a time-critical decision. People only make decisions based on airy assumptions when they're rushed or they are under the delusion that the assumption is correct. I choose rather to avoid assuming at all, and wait for accurate evidence to be presented. If no evidence ever comes forward (I presume none ever will) then it's no "skin off my balls" because I know that among many who jumped to conclusions, I never made a rash assumption and chose a side. Effectively, I'm never wrong; whereas if there is a God, atheists are wrong, and in God's absense, theists are wrong.

That's what jumping to conslusions based on assumptions gets you; the chance to be wrong. And in this case, 50% chance to be wrong is pretty bad. Wait for better odds.

If the Atheist is wrong he goes to hell. If the theist is wrong nothing happens. If the Atheist is right nothing happens. If the theist is right he goes to heaven.

Are you agnostic about the existence of teapots orbitting jupiter? I mean, there's no solid evidence against such a thing. Right?

Quite a while ago, I started the following thread on a somewhat related topic: CSflim's Wager

The argument is also known as Pascal's Wager (or a variant of it). Just talked about this today over breakfast.

Holy shit, 59.5% don't believe in God?

What do you guys think?

Is it suddenly cool to not believe in God? Did I miss a meeting? You folks think it is an empowerment thing?

My faith in humanity is a little shaken, looking at the poll results. I need to go read the responses now.

I think age is a good predictor of the results. I'd like to see a poll like the one above, but broken down by age as well. I'm one of the old farts.

Yes. It's true. All I ever wanted was to be one of the cool kids.

You didn't read my thread ;)

I did, and I liked it! I mentioned it for the sake of those who don't have the time. As think about it, most of the people reading in Philosophy definitely have the time :)