I am a bit late to this thread but it seems to have gone very smoothly so I will make a late entry anyways. I have, like most people, have given a considerable amount of thought to this and I hope you will give my viewpoint some thought.
God & The Universe According to Me....
To begin I would like to define a few terms, please do not take this as talking down to you, it is merely to ensure that when I use a word you will know what I understand the word to mean, and therefore have a better understanding of what I mean.
Definitions:
- Atheism: I would define atheism as the non-belief or rejection of god, gods, and/or theology in general. I personally view atheism as a complete rejection of the idea of religion, rather than just a casual non-belief. I think in many ways it is intellectually dishonest for people without true conviction of non-belief to call themselves atheists in much the same way a Catholic would view a person whose parents were catholic but has never been to church, yet proclaim themselves a catholic. In short an atheist is someone who believe in no higher power whatsoever in a what you see is what you get sort of way.
- Agnosticism: I would define this as the belief that we as people do not have enough information to concretely prove or disprove the existence of god. In effect an agnostic does not believe or disbelieve any reasonably sensible religion, they simply feel that to assert that one is more or less correct than another is without logic or proof. I also believe that you can take part in a religion while being agnostic, that is where faith would step in. I think to be agnostic and have religion you have to be intellectually honest with yourself and others. As long as you are able to distinguish logic and faith you can have both.
Conclusions:
I firmly believe that a great deal of the people who believe themselves atheist have mislabeled themselves and are actually Agnostic. I personally consider myself agnostic, and I believe it is the result of a very logical thinking pattern(opinion). At the same time I would readily recognize that their are certain problems that are not easily solved by logic among the most notable and universal are love and religion.
If you read nothing else read this next paragraph:
I think far to often people use religion as a crutch and a universal explanation. I currently look at math and science as the method we should use to explain our universe in tangibly meaningful ways and god and religion as the method to be used for explaining our universe in intangibly meaningful ways. When you want to understand how the universe was created, and you simply say "God did it" you don't really have an understanding of how it was made...you just know who did it. But science truly attempts to understand how it was made. But at the same time when you want to truly understand why we are here, to look to science and say "To perpetuate our species" you don't really understand why we are here, you understand our biological urges but the true meaning of life is something more deep and meaningful than a simple biological explanation of lust, and I would think most people would agree.
For anyone who is wondering there are several things many people think have yet to be explained by science but in fact most people are very far behind the times when it comes to current scientific theory. There are a number of things science can currently explain that people either don't know about or have an old/incomplete understanding of...for instance:
- How our universe could exist from nothing within the realm of science.
- How life can spring forth from non-life.
- How and why nature is capable of coming up with amazing "technologies" well before people did.
- A number of other scientific missconceptions, for instance "gravity is a force" = false, "time passes at a constant rate" = false, and "the big bang has no hard evidense" = absolutely false.
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