I'm an Agnostic Deist. (Page 4)

deuce916: But both of you are saying that there is a definitive answer.

Lautlos: There is. But no one knows it yet. We can only poke and prod at possibilities.

RadIntentions: There is an answer that I don't know.

deuce916: If you know there is a definitive answer how do you know no-one knows it yet?

Lautlos: I'd say that definitive, objective proof of God (or a lack thereof) would be blasted on every news source the moment it passed peer review, wouldn't you?

deuce916: But there is no proof of a god.

Lautlos: Not yet, no. But an absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence.

RadIntentions: There's no proof that a being tremendously more powerful than us that would be considered a god doesn't exist.

deuce916: Well there is proof of a god or there isn't. Which one is it?

RadIntentions: There's no proof of either. Just like there's no proof that the man was tall or short.

Lautlos: There isn't any, yet. That's not to say that there absolutely never will be, and again, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

deuce916: Okay, so we're back to you don't know.

RadIntentions: That's where we've always been...

Lautlos: That's kind of the point of Agnosticism, yes. Admitting that I don't know (and, in my case, arguing that no one knows).

deuce916: Are you sure no-one knows?

Lautlos: Maybe someone does. But I doubt it.

deuce916: I think someone would know.

RadIntentions: How would they know?

Lautlos: And many claim to know. But I don't think they're all correct, do you?

Mareille: Know what this thread reminds me of ?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/snake-lost-in-skin_us_576db035e4b0f1683239a9b6?

Lautlos: HAH.

Mareille: Guess I'm going to re-cycle this a few times in the room ... please keep a straight face when I do as you will always know why

calybonos: DOG, (chasing it's tail) spelled backwards = this thread.

Zanjan: Lautlos: If I *knew* about God, it wouldn't be a belief; it'd be knowledge of a fact.

Ah, but you DO know about God. Every human on earth has been taught about God. I mean, that not a single soul anywhere, anytime on the planet has been missed, that’s a pretty good track record for a “maybe” or “not real”. It’s like being taught appropriate manners – could we say they’re not a fact because some people don’t display them?

An atheist is someone who rejects God altogether; this much is undisputed. Traditionally, an agnostic is somebody who hasn’t made up their mind yet; they’re not a totally unbiased fence-sitter. If you test that carefully to the core, turns out the thing they haven’t made up their mind about is HOW the knowledge of God should be taught.

They hold doubts about God being a ‘person’, since He’s supposed to be unknowable; as such, they have doubts about His being directly involved with humanity. To them, it’s as if God set His watch then walked off to do something else because He’s just too omnipotent to notice one insignificant human.

Zanjan: As for fence-leaning, we’re all subject to what goes on around us.

People have made arguments that persuade the leaning to occur. Like plants bending in the direction the wind blows, we unconsciously compensate because our cells tell us to rise ‘up’ towards the sun, which means, perpendicular to the ground. To maintain stability, we’ll grow a thicker layer of cells on one side.

What I’m saying is that if the wind (persuasion) is sustained, when it stops blowing, we don’t spring back. Without protection, we’re crooked little people, growing along a crooked path, unable to erase what's done and always struggling to find the sun.

God’s solution to this dilemma is to provide shelter so we can grow straight in the way we should. This leads us to the Prophets of God, Who know more than we do.