Definition of God

[LuckOfTheDraw]

Please state whether you are atheistic, theistic, or agnostic, and provide a short description of your loosest definition of what would constitute a god. Then, if you want, comment on the follow up query.

I think this is a critical foundation with the abundance of God posts made in this forum, in particular because so many atheists see drawing any belief without evidence to be completely ridiculous/insane/stupid.

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I am currently agnostic, though I feel someday, this most likely will change.

I know a lot of people say something to the effect of, "I don't necessarily believe in God, but I think there's a higher power." Is there a difference?

While I see the belief in a conscious, judging God who would sentence someone to eternal damnation for masturbating as a bit silly, I do lean towards believing in the cliched higher power - something perhaps beyond our observable universe.

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A follow up query: is the idea of this inpercievable higher power ridiculous?

I really don't feel it is. One of the very basic characteristics of nature is that for every cause there is an effect, and for every effect there was a cause. Every ounce of logic I have tends to agree with the concept of causality. Extrapolating causality unto the cosmos, it actually seems logical to expect that there was something preceding our universe and that caused our existence.

Of course, as I said, I am only leaning toward this view point. There are a couple of things to be said that could dismiss this belief. First of all, the idea of causality is definitely open for debate on a quantum level. I won't even go into this, as I am not completely sure about how that stuff works, but the idea of matter seemingly randomly popping in and out of existence does throw a wrench into things. Also, there is a problem with extrapolating causality. It's simple; when or where do you stop? If X was responsible for creating the universe, then what was responsible for creating X, and so on and so on.

Anyways, these are the things that come to my mind when I visit this forum. I hope this thread doesn't turn into just another thread where everyone is shouting at eachother without listening to eachother.