X-From-Line: nobody Thu Jun 3 09:58:15 1999 Newsgroups: uk.people.gothic Subject: Re: Everything you ever wanted to know about Jesus, but were afraid to ask! References: <374F8728.EA6633D6@ix.netcom.com> <+tf1hAAP5AU3Ewhq@scathe.demon.co.uk> <375289B3.11B9@axcess.penguin.co.uk> <3753B958.2219@brighton.ac.uk> From: Paul Crowley Date: 03 Jun 1999 09:58:12 +0100 Message-ID: <87ogixvexn.fsf@hedonism.demon.co.uk> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/XEmacs 20.4 - "Emerald" Lines: 37 Xref: hedonism.demon.co.uk misc-news:701 X-Gnus-Article-Number: 701 Thu Jun 3 09:58:15 1999 Chrissy writes: > Pete Scathe wrote: > > > My own position is that I regard the probability of the existence of a > > traditional interventionist deity as being vanishingly small, whilst > > reserving the possibility of the existence of something that might given > > certain definitions thereof be regarded as a deity (but not in a > > traditional sense). > Funnily enough I was considering this just yesterday, before > reading the n.g. I'm reluctant to call myself an atheist, as that > implies an active blanket denial statement. I prefer to keep an open > mind, whilst signalling a very firm "not really interested, thanks" > skywards. I think I take the "atheism" tag and run with it further than most people are prepared to. Strictly, "agnostic" means that you believe that the matter of God's existance is unknowable, so I'm definitely an agnostic. I'm also an atheist: there's a big difference between not believing in the existence of God and actively believing in his nonexistance, and atheism only implies the former. However, I do *not* have an open mind [1]. It's not just that the evidence points against the existence of God, it's that God is an infinitely complex "hypothesis" with no predictive power, so *no* evidence would be sufficient to weight things in His favour. For example, if the heavens were to open and a huge shining bearded face were to appear, saying "Look, my son, I exist, what more do you want?" then I think that God's existence would not be the explanation to reach for. -- __ \/ o\ paul@hedonism.demon.co.uk http://www.hedonism.demon.co.uk/paul/ \ / /\__/ Paul Crowley Upgrade your legacy NT machines to Linux /~\ [1] "A mind is like a door: if you keep it open all the time, you might as well not have one" - cheers Graham!