Demigawd

Quite true. Everyone has their own definition, with various degrees of complexity to boot. My definition of Agnosticism, important since I consider myself one, is "No one knows if there is a god or gods. Alot of religious belief is based upon an animistic form of awe and worship. With science and other scholarly pursuits, communication, comparison, and criticism of humankind's wealth of knowledge is possible in which no comparison can be made throughout history."

Demigawd

Sure. What else is there? Trusting prophecies and visions from other people's subjective obervations and conclusions? Attributing a fear or gutfeeling to an invisible entity's manipulation?

NonHomogenized

All right, let's take a look.
[qoute]
1. The Big Bang is the act of divine creation. In the beginning God, and He initiated all processes of evolution, including the Darwinian one. There is a God, but His existence is hidden from us [at least while we're alive in this body]. He is the God of natural law, from which there is no deviation. Prayer to change things doesn't work.

2. The Big Bang was a natural result of quantum fluctuation. In the beginning were the particles. All the parameters necessary for evolution are inherent in the particles from the beginning onwards. Natural law is universal because ... that's all the universe has. The reason why natural law has no deviation, and why prayer doesn't work, is that there is no God.

How could we know? A universe with or without such a God would not be different, except perhaps for the possibility of an afterlife. The universe behaves exactly as if there were no God.
[/quote]

True. If there is such a god, then we won't know it, unless it reveals itself.
As I see it, no. That the universe behaves exactly as if there is no god indicates to me that we should treat the universe as if there is no god. If such a god wanted us to acknowledge its' existence, it would make itself known. That it, if it exists, hides itself so thoroughly indicates that it wants to be unknown.

This god you are hypothesizing is, essentially, hiding. The world wasn't hiding its roundness, it simply wasn't appearant to those who were only looking at the ground (the curve of the horizon is, to me, rather telling). It's not a particularly similar situation, imo. However, I agree that it doesn't "rule out" a deist god. However, why on earth would you believe in something for which the evidence is the same as if that thing didn't exist?
No, not necessarily. It tends to, but it's not a given. However, as I said above, why believe in something for which the evidence is no evidence?

I presume that the likelihood is that there isn't a god, and that, if there is, it makes no practical difference in my life (indeed, I would say it is utterly irrelevant). If there is, in fact, such a being, and an afterlife, I will worry about it at that time. Such a being would not go to such lengths to hide itself if it wanted our lives to be impacted by its existence.

bd-from-kg

emotional:

This puts the problem in a nutshell nicely. And the answer can be put into an even smaller nutshell: Ockham’s Razor.

At first sight this seems to make disbelief in God rest on the shaky ground of an obscure, seemingly debatable principle. But that’s not so. In reality we all apply Ockham’s Razor all the time without a second thought. It would be impossible to function as a rational agent without it.

For example: You put three cookies in a cookie jar. You leave the room, come back an hour later, open the jar, and ... what’s this? There are only two cookies there!

Possibility 1: Your roommate, who’s something of a cookie monster, ate one of the cookies while you were gone.

Possibility 2: No one took the cookie. It just spontaneously ceased to exist. In fact, almost everything ceases to exist the moment no one is looking at it. Normally, just before someone looks for such an item, one of an army of invisible gremlins (the only things that really do exist when no one is seeing them) create a new copy of it exactly where the original one was (or would be by that time), so no one’s the wiser. But this was one of those rare occasions when the gremlins screwed up.

Or take this one. You look around the room. No one seems to be there. You look again; still no sign of anyone. You look high and low, behind every piece of furniture, behind the vase, under the clothes you left on the floor, in the toilet. Nobody home.

Possibility 1: There’s no one there.

Possibility 2: Yehudi’s there, but he’s invisible. To you, that is. Unfortunately he’s not invisible to everyone else. He’s constantly thumbing his nose at you and heckling you mercilessly. (You can’t hear him, of course.) Because of Yehudi, everyone is laughing at you behind your back and thinks that you’re an idiot. But of course nobody lets on, so you never have a clue that any of this is happening.

Most likely you went for Possibility 1 in each case. But why? Ockham’s Razor, that’s why. Do you know that possibility 2 is false in either case? No, you do not. Do you worry about it? No, you do not. It would be irrational to try to take into account every possible explanation for the observed state of affairs. If you tried, you’d soon go mad if you weren’t already there.

So it is for the hypothesis that there’s a infinitely powerful, wise, benevolent entity out there who carefully hides all traces of his existence. It’s possible, just as it’s possible that you are being controlled by aliens from Arcturus who are aiming mind-controlling delta waves at your brain. But unless you have some serious evidence that something of the sort is going on, you would be quite insane to take this possibility seriously.

The best definition of positive atheism, with respect to a particular god, in my opinion, is the belief that the possibility that this god exists is so remote that the only rational choice is to ignore the possibility of its existence. The hypothesis of a god who remains totally hidden is clearly in this category. So you’re perfectly justified in forming a firm opinion that such a being does not exist. In fact, it would be insane not to.

Shadowy Man

The situations you posit would not produce the same universes. In the fist one you say that God initiated evolution. In this case, it would have to be possible that we may one day discover a step in evolution that is physically impossible by all the known laws of the universe and could only be accomplished through the divine intervention of a God.

The true degenerate case is if the god created the universe and did nothing else - evolution being a natural by-product of the laws of nature that the god instilled in the universe in the first place.

I always wonder when people say that evolution couldn't have happened by itself, and therefore a god must have been involved. I just want to ask them at what step did this god intervene? Which step is impossible by the natural laws of the universe?

Normal

Those are two subjective reasons for belief, although those two are more irrational then others. The total list of reasons could not be exhausted here, as they are different for everyone.

A few atheist reasons for believing there is no god are similiar in their irrationality, such as "I don't believe in god because I don't like the idea of hell", or "I don't believe in god because he takes away my free will" are two I've actually heard which seem outragous to me.

The whole issue of evidence is a double egded sword, theists will claim they have evidence for his existence, and atheists will claim no evidence exists. It's completely subjective to experience.

Carol Massey

Like trying to define "natural world".

Philosoft

Completely subjective? You can't think of a single instance of intersubjective agreement about what constitutes evidence?

orac

Atheism: There may or may not be one or more Gods, but I can't see any evidence supporting the existance of any Gods, so I don't believe in any Gods. (Some atheists go further and say that thousands of years of looking suggests that either there is no god at all, or any god that does exist is completely different to anything proposed by actual religions. Most of the debate over the definition of atheism seems to be about the validity of this view.)

Agnosticism: There may or may not be a God, but I can't see any evidence supporting the existance of God, only I'm not prepared to admit that I don't actually have a current genuine belief in the existance of any specific Gods so I'll say I'm agnostic. (Belief in the possibility of an unproven entity is not the same as actual belief in the existance of a specific unproven entity. Certain definitions of agnostic can be applied to some atheists, and probably others to some theists - you're not limited to just one label to use when describing your view on every possible aspect of existance knowledge and belief.)

Note: most people are a-leprechaunists, a-tooth-fairyists, a-santa-clausists, a-dancing-pink-elephants-on-unicycleists, and so on. The only reason atheism needs a name is that so many people are theists, and this has an impact on people's lives. People try to pass laws requiring belief in God, so expressing your lack of belief can be important. Few laws require belief in santa, so it's just not a big issue.

Jobar

The principle of parsimony which bd explicates so well is the primary reason for positive disbelief. http://users.adelphia.net/~ybechor/sig_occam.gif

A more subtle, and less powerful argument is that if one assumes a god in spite of Occam's Razor, then that god is either completely uncaring, in which case we have no reason to worship; or he is positively attempting to hide, and has given us senses which can not detect him. In such a case it is against the will of god to try to detect god. He gave us our senses and intellect such that he is undetectable. It would appear to be the will of this god that we ignore him.

This, of course, poses a powerful dilemma for anyone who wishes to believe in some god. A hidden god apparently does not wish to be believed in, and therefore any believers should really disbelieve!