Tuesday, October 05, 2004

[tranmission start]

thoughts: a question of conceptual acceptance?

right. haven't posted anything here for a while (not that bouncing meatballs are the only thing that has been happening lately - see post in main blog). anyhow, had a discussion with one of my friends Gene recently about the conceptual (can i call it that?) existence of God, and other cheem stuff like that... and awaaay we go...

Theists: people who believe there IS a God
Atheists: people who believe there ISN'T a God
Agnostics: people who believe that MAYBE there is a God

what's so cheem about this you may ask? well... for me, the common belief i had was that atheists believed that there was NO such thing as God, and that possibly meant they did not agree with the concept of religion. but since religion essentially is a system of beliefs (in some cases) then could it be said that their religion is that they deny the existence of religion? (lost yet?) or is it that you can have beliefs without them being based on religion? (possible)

anyway, the point i wanted to check with Gene basically was - if atheists believed there was NO God, then wouldn't they first have to acknowledge there is the CONCEPT of there being a God as a possible situation in the first place? because without a 'Yes' how can there be a 'No'? i mean, their arguement about the lack of existence of God would have to be assumed on the principle that some people believe that God exists, and in order to reject it they first have to believe? hmm...

so we came to the conclusion *cue drumroll* that the atheists 1. acknowledge there is the 'concept' of God 2. They don't agree with it - hence denying God's existence.

i posed this same question to my friend Audrey, who at 17 gave me a pretty good answer... very good in fact... she put it in an analogy like this - as Chrsitians we acknowledge that there is such thing as Darwin's theory of evolution, but we do not agree with the idea behind it...

so then... it makes you wonder... when people fill up those forms and under the 'religion' bit they fill in 'free thinker', what does it actually mean? that they're agnostic (open to the possibility of the existence of God - hence literally a 'free thinker') or that they're atheist (have no religion... makes you wonder why they don't write that down... or write 'atheist' for that matter)

till next time...

[transmission end]

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chr1s0ng put the word on the street at 5:21 PM
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