Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

[Peh]

JWeinCom said:

Runa216 said:
We're going on, what, 200 replies just about the definition and application of the terms 'atheist' and 'theist'?

What a profound waste of time; furthermore, it upsets me to see so many people arguing in favour of theism or religion being the default setting for a person's belief system instead of something taught and passed down through generations. It's also kinda pathetic to see people arguing unrelated points about HIV to liken it to theistic belief, and it's even worse to argue that a sandwich is atheist...

This is why I hate trying to debate online. Nothing of value is gained or lost, nobody cares about facts if they can twist things to suit their needs, and passion seems to matter more than reason. A shame, too.

 If you're not interested, don't participate.  Simple. 

Peh said:

Ok, i see where you are coming from. You want to use "not a theist" as an umbrella term.

 

Well, it can work.

 Then that brings me back to the question I started with. 

We have two definitions we can potentially use for atheist. 

I believe that the way I've defined it is better because it excludes things we both agree we don't care about when we are talking about atheists. 

Wouldn't that make this a better definition?

Let's see...

we got 2 people who have no contact with the concept of god. So, they both don't believe in it. According to your definition they would be called "not a theist".

One of them will be shown the concept of god and he rejects the claims with whatever reason he has. His believe hasn't changed, cause he is still not believing in it. But now, you would call him an atheist and the other still "not a theist" while both are lacking the believe. They would still do whatever they did before in life. What if the other forgets about the concept of god? Would he turn back to being "not a theist"? 

In the end you have two labels for the same end result which is : lack of believe. But one is based on the ignorance of the concept of a god and the other of rejecting of it. 

Atheist in itself means "without god". The word itself would apply to both. 

I can't really say if that is the better definition. Sorry.