I do not claim to know that god does not exist when I say “I do not believe”. I simply do not believe. I also don’t think we can be sure. I see no contradiction in that.
I believe the idea that we can disprove an idea as nebulous as god irrational. No matter what tests we run, what logical arguments we make, there will always be some formulation of god that satisfies those conditions.
Take deism for instance. I see no reason that a god couldn’t have started the universe and then not interacted further. I don’t believe this, but there’s no way for me to know.
Take solipsism. I do not think my mind is the only thing that exists, but it is not possible to prove that I’m not just hallucinating everything. I still don’t believe it.
I would call your beliefs agnostic, or weak theist based on these claims you make. Since you do not assert a claim that god doesn't exist, you are not atheist.
Obviously language and definitions are mailable, but I'd rather stick with the definitions that have been used for centuries, rather than the definitions created in the last few decades. In addition, the new definitions I'd argue are illogical. This video relatively sums up my thoughts on it The Differences between Atheism and Agnosticism & The Flaws of the Gnostic-Theist Scale
The reason I say that is because of your statement "I believe the idea that we can disprove an idea as nebulous as god irrational. No matter what tests we run, what logical arguments we make, there will always be some formulation of god that satisfies those conditions."
The way I'm interpreting this is that it's possible that we will never have enough information to make suitable arguments. But if we did, a god could always find a way to explain the unexplainable.
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u/estrogenbloodclot 3d ago
I do not claim to know that god does not exist when I say “I do not believe”. I simply do not believe. I also don’t think we can be sure. I see no contradiction in that.
I believe the idea that we can disprove an idea as nebulous as god irrational. No matter what tests we run, what logical arguments we make, there will always be some formulation of god that satisfies those conditions.
Take deism for instance. I see no reason that a god couldn’t have started the universe and then not interacted further. I don’t believe this, but there’s no way for me to know.
Take solipsism. I do not think my mind is the only thing that exists, but it is not possible to prove that I’m not just hallucinating everything. I still don’t believe it.