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Post by moritz on Jul 22, 2008 3:53:52 GMT -8
1 Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, 'I do not believe, I know.'
2 Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. 'I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.'
3 Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.'
4 Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.'
5 Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I don't know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.'
6 Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'
7 Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.'
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Post by moritz on Jul 22, 2008 3:54:08 GMT -8
Hi everyone. Here's a little poll to see where the people on this board stand in matters of belief. It's also a good opportunity to see how active this forum is. The scale at hand has been created by Richard Dawkins. He acknowledges that the spectrum of possible beliefs is much wider but he reduces it to 7 possible answers. So, where do you stand?
For me, the main question is how God is defined. If we speak of a personal God, my answer is 6. If God can be any kind of impersonal superior force it'll be 5. Since we are dealing with a personal God here, I vote 6.
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Post by Josh on Jul 22, 2008 8:41:00 GMT -8
Mo, I had a feeling you were going to post along these lines Fine, I'll play the game. The only thing is that I feel like the definitions of certain words in the scale and the context needs to be articulated more clearly to explain my vote. But if I get some time for that, I'll post.
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Post by Margot on Jul 23, 2008 11:01:57 GMT -8
Wow, this is absolutely amazing. I've called myself a Christian for---well, lets just say a LONG time--and in any other time of my life, I would have marked myself as a 2, but this time I read each description and felt fully convinced I was a 1 ! Guess those struggles and suffering have really paid off in a bit of refined gold. I'm happy.
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Post by Josh on Jul 24, 2008 10:47:50 GMT -8
Marmotmail: Your post made me think of this passage in 1 Peter: 1 Peter 1:3-9 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Thanks for the reminder of that passage, btw, because it's perfect for a certain aspect of my teaching this coming sunday Mo: So, here's the difficulty I find with a scale like this: There are aspects about God and ways in which I would say I know God, and then again there are aspects of God that I think would better be stated as belief. For instance, based on my personal experiences with God, I often do feel that I am experiencing God without a shade of ambiguity. However, if I were to try to rationally prove that experience to myself (and definitely to others) I find there is no way to absolutely prove it through any logical means. Thus, in one sense (intuitive) I feel I'm mostly a 1 but in any sense involving rationality alone, I am a 2. Also, one must also take into account moods, with their notorious "fudge-factor" making one's approach to these things not quite as cut-and-dry as we might want them to be. What did C. S. Lewis say? "Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable. But when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods where they get off, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith."
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Post by moritz on Jul 25, 2008 16:25:15 GMT -8
Wow, this is absolutely amazing. I've called myself a Christian for---well, lets just say a LONG time--and in any other time of my life, I would have marked myself as a 2, but this time I read each description and felt fully convinced I was a 1 ! Guess those struggles and suffering have really paid off in a bit of refined gold. I'm happy.
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Post by christopher on Jul 27, 2008 6:51:33 GMT -8
I agree with what Josh wrote in the last post. There's only a little room for doubt for me, and that's only when I question the evidence of my own experience with God. But proving God is another story. So, I marked myself a cool 2.
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