Are You an Atheist, Agnostic or a Believer?

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Question: which is physically more dangerous? Fundamental Judaism, fundamental Christianity, or fundamental Islam?

Physically?

Involving physical death to infidels.

I don't know, enlight me.

This is an interesting thread...

Which religion is more dangerous? All of them have 100% death rates.

well, the point he is trying to make is that fundamentalist christianity is better, putting down islam and judaism, as he said before that jews were doomed to perdition because of not believing in Christ.

But the three of them are always dangerous, it depends greatly on the culture, and how governments are run on each society, obviously in western societies fundamentalist christianity is less physically dangerous in the sense of executions to "infidels", nevertheless fundamentalism christianity is always dangerous if they have a big influence in making laws about banning same-sex marriage for example, which it seems very likely the case, which is harmful to a free society. (The same with the other religions) Apart from medical negligence in a few cases, sexism or mysoginism apparently, etc.

What I really wonder is how islam and judaism in western societies are compared to fundamentalism christianity, without taking the middle east into account.

So far as I can tell, belief in god arises from one of these statements:

1) Lots of other people believe it, so it might be true.
2) This ancient book talks about it, so it might be true.
3) I had a personal and subjective experience where god talked to me, so it might be true.
4) The world is really complicated, so it might be true.

Can anyone come up with a reason to believe that doesn't amount to one of the above?

I just took the original and rather silly quiz. Here's what it said:

"God? No thanks. You're not buying into any religion.
They're all bunk to you. You rather focus on what you know is true.
You may be a passive non-believer or a rabid atheist activist.
But one thing is for sure... no one's going to make you go to church!"

There we go. Full disclosure.

I do have issues with the question, though. Why don't most people realise that agnostic and theist/atheist are NOT mutually exclusive. The former is a statement of epistemology, and the latter is a statement of belief. I happen to be an agnostic atheist. Other people could as well be agnostic theists.

I drives me right up the wall when people treat it as a spectrum that goes from theist <-> agnostic <-> atheist. That is simply wrong.

One does not have to provide an argument for the existence of made up entities.

That works exactly the same way with a believer, doesn't it?
In that case, you don't have enough evidence to prove that God actually exist as an intelligent being, as well as the prove to deny his existence. It is not intellectually either if you go by that, it would work the same way, wether you are atheist or believer.

Actually, that makes no logical sense. When one lacks evidence that a thing exists, the default position is a lack of belief, for any intellectually honest person. Are you familiar with Bertand Russell's celestial teapot argument? If you are not, allow me to paraphrase it.

Imagine that a person were to claim that there is a teapot in orbit around the sun, between Mars and Jupiter. It's too small to be seen by our telescopes, goes the claim. Which is the more intellectually honest position here? To say that one doesn't believe the claim, or that it's silly to disbelieve this claim?

The fundamental point here is that, lacking evidence in favour of a hypothesis, it's rather silly to claim that one should accept it. The burden of proof is always upon the claimant.

How about something more concrete? You can't prove that Odin isn't the supreme god of the universe, and that he demands offerings of fresh veal every second Wednesday. Would you say that one can't intellectually reject this? If you do reject this, please explain why this example differs from the general case of the Judeo-Christian god, or Zeus, or Allah, or etc etc etc.

Though this is well worth repeating. You all appear to be confusing the definitions. Theism/atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. It really does bother me that this point is not commonly understood.

Not pure Judaism, but Rabbi Akiba's Judaism. Christianity is in fact a form of Judaism. However, if they don't want to accept Yeshua, even though He fulfilled Isaiah 53, Zachariah 12:10, Psalm 22, Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 7, etc, they need to reinstate the sacrificial system. Christians have Yeshua/Jesus for the sacrifice and atonement for their sins, nonaccepting Jews would need to still offer sacrifices and follow the whole Torah, not just the Talmud.

Do you really not consider it a bit weird when you argue that an ancient book says that a character within that book fulfilled various prophecies, also within that book? Is it so very hard to recognise that a book can contain whatever the author(s) might wish to write?

Alternatively, one could ask what makes the bible a better source than, say, infinite jest, or the iliad, or henry iv part 1, or the prose edda.

You Are Agnostic

God? Religion? Maybe... you're just not sure.
You're still figuring out your spiritual path... or figuring out you really don't care.
You believe that no one really can know the true story about religion or God.
So you might as well relax a little. You'll go crazy trying make sense of it all.

You Are An Atheist




God? No thanks. You're not buying into any religion.
They're all bunk to you. You rather focus on what you know is true.
You may be a passive non-believer or a rabid atheist activist.
But one thing is for sure... no one's going to make you go to church!