Lately, Scott Adams (of Dilbert) has been on a God/religion jag. His latest question/statement is (edited): do you believe in (1) Psychics? (2) God? (not a multiple choice, this is a two-parter.)
The Psychic thing I’ll leave alone.Scott seems to want to draw parallels between the two, and that just muddies the waters further.
As far as belief in God goes, this is an interesting conundrum. If someone believes in God, this is pretty straightforward. They say “yes, I believe in God, and here’s what I believe about God…”. Now, if someone says that they don’t believe in God, they then have to define what they don’t believe in. This generally goes something like “I don’t believe that God is an old, white man with a long flowing beard.” or “If a benevolent God exists, why is there so much strife in the world?”.
So, here’s the thing: what if we defined God to be “the force that causes the Earth to revolve around the Sun”. Now, who “believes” in God? Perhaps someone could argue that they don’t believe that this force is God, but then how is their opinion relevant when they’ve already said that they don’t believe in God?
So, the way I see it, people who believe in God have defined God in a believable (at least to themselves) way. People who don’t, have defined God as something not believable. So, its less about “belief” and more about definitions, and a “desire” to believe.
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