Atheist theists

[Taiji]

Some theists don't believe that god exists. They believe he transcends existence. That god provides existence, but without the loop whereby he makes himself subject to his own domain.

I'm atheist. I don't believe that god exists. But I don't know how existence works, and if I ever find out (by convincing myself that I know) then perhaps I'll be a kind of theist while in most respects still being an atheist.

Anyone got any thoughts around this matter?

[Manco]

They still believe in a god, which makes them theists, not atheists.
Once you identify that which transcends existence, if you believe in such a thing, as an intelligent being (being in the loosest sense) you're a theist.

An atheist can believe in something that transcends existence, but he'll only be atheist as long as he doesn't ascribe it any intelligence

(of course this is in many ways dependent on how exactly you define god. I've taken the liberty of assuming it must be an active, deliberate and conscious entity)

[Taiji]

Yeah, good points. I suppose it also hinges on the definitions of 'belief' and 'exist'. Since usually we can turn all beliefs about something which doesn't exist into false beliefs.

[Himster]

Surely that's agnostic-theism?

[Nimthill]

Atheistic theists are like vegetarian meat. It's impossible, they're mutually exclusives.

[(s)AINT]

Atheistic theists are like vegetarian meat. It's impossible, they're mutually exclusives.

Thx. It is a self canceling statement.

[Himster]

A gnostic is someone who knows whether or not theres a god. A theist is someone who believes in a god.
And we all know what "a" means attatched to those words.

Not only are they not mutually exclusive, but everyone falls into a category of both. Everyone either believes in god or doesnt believe in god. And everyone either knows god or doesnt know god.

For example I believe in god and I do not claim 100% certainty of his existence: I am and agnostic-theist. My brother belives there is no god and claims knowledge to that effect also: He is a gnostic-atheist. My uncle is a born again christian: He is a gnostic-theist. My ex-girlfriend didnt believe in god but didnt reject the possibility of one: She was an agnostic-atheist.
(Most people are actually agnostic BTW, despite what they might claim.)

[hellas1]

@Taiji,

"I'm atheist. I don't believe that god exists. But I don't know how existence works, and if I ever find out (by convincing myself that I know) then perhaps I'll be a kind of theist while in most respects still being an atheist."

Look my friend, you will NEVER know how existence "works" in a human body.
Your brain can't contain it. Give it up man...........pulling for straws with God or No God........

Your Spirit is able to contain this understanding because it isn't time bound.
The understanding is not given while one is "time bound" per se.

Comments?

@Himster,

"A gnostic is someone who knows whether or not there's a god. A theist is someone who believes in a god."

I beg to differ:

Gnostic: Ebionites, Ophites, Basilians, etc.

Theist: Someone who believes in a god

Gnostics CLAIMED to know god and had a "special revelation" which their group ONLY had, Christians/Muslims/Jews state there IS a God who is THE true God.

Some people say that the Sufi Muslims incorporated Gnostic ideas into Islam however.

Matter of fact, Muslims call Christians & Jews "Peoples of the Book"...The "Book" being the Tanakh or Old Testament.

hellas1.5

[Himster]

@Taiji,

"I'm atheist. I don't believe that god exists. But I don't know how existence works, and if I ever find out (by convincing myself that I know) then perhaps I'll be a kind of theist while in most respects still being an atheist."

Look my friend, you will NEVER know how existence "works" in a human body.
Your brain can't contain it. Give it up man...........pulling for straws with God or No God........

Your Spirit is able to contain this understanding because it isn't time bound.
The understanding is not given while one is "time bound" per se.

Comments?

@Himster,

"A gnostic is someone who knows whether or not there's a god. A theist is someone who believes in a god."

I beg to differ:

Gnostic: Ebionites, Ophites, Basilians, etc.

Theist: Someone who believes in a god

Gnostics CLAIMED to know god and had a "special revelation" which their group ONLY had, Christians/Muslims/Jews state there IS a God who is THE true God.

Some people say that the Sufi Muslims incorporated Gnostic ideas into Islam however.

Matter of fact, Muslims call Christians & Jews "Peoples of the Book"...The "Book" being the Tanakh or Old Testament.

hellas1.5

You're not completely wrong here, historically there have been a number of abrahamic movements that have used that word to describe themselves.

In modern english however we have a word derived from gnosis (which I'm sure you know) meaning: "knowledge". Now gnosistcism itself refers to a very specialised form of knowledge, deriving both from the exact meaning of the original Greek term and its usage in platonist philosophy.

Gnostic sects are quite distinct from those with actual gnosis (actual divine knowldege).

[Taiji]

And yet you can buy vegetarian meat

And I suppose you can also eat vegetarians

[Khassaki]

And yet you can buy vegetarian meat

And I suppose you can also eat vegetarians

That is my plan in case of an zombie uprising. I'm keeping a list of all the vegies and vegans I know, so I can be a healthy living zombie.

As to your OP. There is more to the universe than we have so far seen, but a supernatural critter of some description running the whole thing is exceedingly improbable.

[Tankbuster]

Some theists don't believe that god exists. They believe he transcends existence. That god provides existence, but without the loop whereby he makes himself subject to his own domain.

What a crock of .

Unless something exists in some sense there's no reason to talk about it proving anything. If it can 'provide existence' in some sense, it has enough 'existence' in another sense to provide the existence in the first sense.

The only time word games like this even remotely impress me is when I'm high. Really ing high.

[Taiji]

What a crock of .

Unless something exists in some sense there's no reason to talk about it proving anything. If it can 'provide existence' in some sense, it has enough 'existence' in another sense to provide the existence in the first sense.

Well yes, in at least one sense of crock of , it probably is.

But the point is that the creator of existence doesn't exist in the same sense as it's creation. To say that 'it exists and doesn't' is just to, on the face of it, ignore that boundary and in reality allude to 2 separate senses of the word 'exist'. To say that 'it exists' is to make it subject to one of it's creations, an unfortunate precedent if it's previously thought to be omnipotent. But then to say it 'doesn't exist' just garners a 'well duh'.

I figure the way around it is to point out that there's no convincing argument for this other kind of existence actually existing in the presumable existence beyond it... etc. etc. etc.

The only time word games like this even remotely impress me is when I'm high. Really ing high.

Perhaps if you spend a lot more time 'Really ing high' you'll retain the skill

[Tankbuster]

Well yes, in at least one sense of crock of , it probably is.

But the point is that the creator of existence doesn't exist in the same sense as it's creation. To say that 'it exists and doesn't' is just to, on the face of it, ignore that boundary and in reality allude to 2 separate senses of the word 'exist'. To say that 'it exists' is to make it subject to one of it's creations, an unfortunate precedent if it's previously thought to be omnipotent. But then to say it 'doesn't exist' just garners a 'well duh'.

I figure the way around it is to point out that there's no convincing argument for this other kind of existence actually existing in the presumable existence beyond it... etc. etc. etc.

No, the way around it is to recognise that saying that something 'exists' does not entail any characteristics other than that it is a concept that maps to something in reality, in whatever sense that may be.

We use 'exist' for all kinds of words. My guitar exists, love exists, the concept of logic exists, legends exists, the universe exists. Yet the existence of my guitar is a different kind of existence than the sense in which logic exists, or that legends exists, or that love exists, or that the universe exists. We don't mean the same by any of these: the context -the word which precedes 'exist'- determines how we interpret the kind of existence we're talking about. We don't assume that all these kinds of existence are the same.

So when a theist says 'God exists' that's perfectly acceptable: they can decide for themselves what that existence entails. If it is fundamentally different of all other kinds of existence (which probably any theist would argue that it is), big deal: whatever sense God exists in will then simply become part of the definition of exist for the subsection God.

Easy.

Perhaps if you spend a lot more time 'Really ing high' you'll retain the skill

But then I couldn't dispell the mysteries of your word games as quickly

[Taiji]

No, the way around it is to recognise that saying that something 'exists' does not entail any characteristics other than that it is a concept that maps to something in reality, in whatever sense that may be.

We use 'exist' for all kinds of words. My guitar exists, love exists, the concept of logic exists, legends exists, the universe exists. Yet the existence of my guitar is a different kind of existence than the sense in which logic exists, or that legends exists, or that love exists, or that the universe exists. We don't mean the same by any of these: the context -the word which precedes 'exist'- determines how we interpret the kind of existence we're talking about. We don't assume that all these kinds of existence are the same.

So when a theist says 'God exists' that's perfectly acceptable: they can decide for themselves what that existence entails. If it is fundamentally different of all other kinds of existence (which probably any theist would argue that it is), big deal: whatever sense God exists in will then simply become part of the definition of exist for the subsection God.

Easy.

In your opinion existence exists as a human experience modelling process only?

But then I couldn't dispell the mysteries of your word games as quickly

It's not my word 'game', I'm not a theist remember

[Tankbuster]

In your opinion existence exists as a human experience modelling process only?

No, not only that, now you're going the tour of the Transcendental Argument. Existence is both something conceptual and something real. It is real in the sense that some things necessarily map to reality in some ways to the extent that we can talk about their effects and their uses, and it's a conceptual modelling process for humans in the sense that we use the word existence as a linguistic place-holder for the way in which these things map to reality.

[justicar5]

the phrase you are looking for is Deist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

[cfmonkey45]

This may be what you are looking for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology

• Neither existence nor nonexistence as we understand it in the physical realm, applies to God; i.e., the Divine is abstract to the individual, beyond existing or not existing, and beyond conceptualization regarding the whole (one cannot say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; nor can we say that God is nonexistent).
• God is divinely simple (one should not claim that God is one, or three, or any type of being.)
• God is not ignorant (one should not say that God is wise since that word arrogantly implies we know what "wisdom" means on a divine scale, whereas we only know what wisdom is believed to mean in a confined cultural context).
• Likewise, God is not evil (to say that God can be described by the word 'good' limits God to what good behavior means to human beings individually and en masse).
• God is not a creation (but beyond that we cannot define how God exists or operates in relation to the whole of humanity).
• God is not conceptually defined in terms of space and location.
• God is not conceptually confined to assumptions based on time.

Basically, it's quite simple. Existence and essence are contingent upon differing systems of epistemology (in idealism, for instance, there is the belief that everything is merely an idea and there exists no matter, sort of like the matrix, whereas empiricism takes only things that can be perceived by the senses as being "more real" than things that cannot), but the platonic concepts that were used to flush out Christian Trinitarian theology assumed that existence and essence were the aggregate of what a being can or cannot do, and this comprises essentially what "it" "is." Take for instance, a completely theoretical concept that is not abstract, such as an apple or, to provide a "unreal" example, a unicorn. An apple's existence is defined as what it can do, or what it is. For instance, a mere apple is usually red, though it can be colored, is generally sweet, and is developed from the ovaries of an apple tree to provide nutrients for seeds. An apple, for instance, cannot be sentient, or rather, it might be, but that is not what we would traditionally describe as being an apple. Thus, in one instance, we can define what an object "is" firstly by rational and empirical observation (i.e. observing it's qualities, such as being red, sweet, or grown from an apple tree), and another by negation (an apple cannot be sentient). This only applies to immanent objects.

When it is used to describe something that is trascendent, which implies that it is both somewhat in the universe and outside it, though not bound by it, normative methods of extracting knowledge, such as observation, are rendered useless. For example, if God exists, what color is he? What are his base constituents (atoms? electrons? photons?)? Is he bound by fourth dimensional space-time? The issue with this, metaphysically speaking, is that existence as we know it is ill-defined and insufficient for anything apart from what we can observe, thus, the true nature of existence, if there is such a thing, is completely abstract to us, and if we attempt to deal with such matters, we can only truly speak in negation, if even this is possible.

[Treize]

Some theists don't believe that god exists. They believe he transcends existence. That god provides existence, but without the loop whereby he makes himself subject to his own domain.

I'm atheist. I don't believe that god exists. But I don't know how existence works, and if I ever find out (by convincing myself that I know) then perhaps I'll be a kind of theist while in most respects still being an atheist.

Anyone got any thoughts around this matter?

I am in the same position as you, I would describe myself agnostic though.
But I still bash theists and preferably organised religion.

[Admiral Piett]

I understand what you're getting at, Taiji. But if you accept that a diety exists in some form or another (even if not physical), this is simply a different form of theism, kind of like deism.