So my housemate can be classified as very cool guy in my opinion, though I am fairly sure we would not always have gotten on well… he used to be a dominie at some happy clappy church group thingy and be all on the rollercoaster for jesus and what-not. Now, though he still believes in god and all those good things, he has left the church completely and preaches freedom of thought and that questioning is good and all those good things. But he does have a lot of knowledge from his bible-study days that I find quite interesting sometimes.
Last night, we were debating the definition of atheism. I think he got it wrong. but he said that atheism is a ridiculous religion because you can’t believe that you don’t believe in something. blah - old argument and a silly one if you ask me. He then asked me that if someone were to provide me with physical evidence of some god-like entity, or if that god-like entity were to present itsself to me and I can see with my own eyes, would I still tell him that I don’t believe in any god? My answer: I do not believe in any god now because I have no evidence to suggest that I should, and I have overwhelming evidence to suggest that believing in god is as fruitful as believing in santa claus. If presented with evidence to the contrary, I will, of course, reconsider my position based on the evidence then at hand.
He said that this made me a hard-core agnostic, not an atheist. Argh.
So, any thoughts on definitions of beliefs?