From: djheydt@kithrup.com
In article <107ac24$1vbbm$1@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath wrote:
>> By that logic, as someone somewhere between atheist and agnostic,
>> I should be afraid of death. I'm not. I first faced my real
>> chance of death a bit over twenty-five years ago and found it
>> didn't bother me at all. (The situation was prepping for bypass
>> surgery. Not all who undergo it survive. My vastly bigger fear
>> was surviving with brain damage, which can also happen.)
>
>As I understand the terms, you can't really be "between" atheist and
>agnostic. To be atheistic means not to believe in a god. To be agnostic
>means to think the question of a deity's existence can't be resolved. An
>agnostic can believe that there's a god in spite of that lack of
>evidence, or not.
>
>The main point is that being atheistic doesn't require affirmatively
>believing in the non-existence of a god. Someone who has never been
>exposed to the idea of gods and hasn't come up with it independently
>would be an atheist.
>
>Personally, I don't fear death (the state of being dead), but I do fear
>dying (the process).
[Hal Heydt]
I don't know whether or not the existence of one or more deities
can be resolved. I do know that, at least to my satisfaction, that
it has not been. To date, despite great efforts by many people
over many centuries, there is a profound lack of evidence or
demonstration FOR the existence of a god or gods. So far, this
makes the probability of such existence extremely low, so--at
present--my default position is that god(s) do not exist.
So....you tell me. Does that make me an atheist or an
agnostic...or some fuzzy state in between the two that has not
yet had a quantum collapse?
As for death... In the specific instance, I would never have
experienced dying.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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