Are you an atheist if you believe in the existence of a being who ...

[Boojatta]

fulfills some of the following roles,
but you don't believe
in the existence of a being who fulfills
all of the following roles?

• Creator of an occasional miracle
  
• Cares about the life of each believer
  
• Judges each person after death
  
• Creator of the universe
  
• Provider of moral guidance to human beings
  
• Expects and wants to be worshiped
  

[Toucano]

1. God is an human expression of an unidentified universal constant or force.

I don't believe in a being at all. I don't believe in a Santa Claus in the sky.

I do believe that there are forces that we haven't been able to explain, that exist. They're either too small or too big, and humans haven't identified them yet, so we call them God.

String theory might be on the path to identifying these unsubscribed, invisible forces.

Personally, I'm comfortable with the mystery. There's more unknown than known.

[USArmyParatrooper]

2. No, you are not

The fact that you believe in some type of deity means you're not an atheist. I'm not sure if there's a classification for people who don't subscribe to the teachings in any particular religion, but believe in a deity with their own unique "understanding"

Personally I'm a deist.

[Newest Reality]

6. As a semi-reformed, informal Taoist and

Zen Apostate, I find the argument of theist versus atheist as dualist, seeing how both argue untenable, (but related, polar) positions that provide anecdotal evidence either of a mythical or scientific/intellectual kind. Both seem to require a faith that a deity is either there or not there seeing how a transcendental, omnipotent, etc. ultimate deity could potentially be indescribable by any standards.

Thus, seeing the argument as such and considering it as a conceptual bifurcation, can one be neither a theist or an atheist? I guess that depends on who you hang around with since consensus often ends-up determining what is acceptable as reality. It seems that a thesis has its antithesis and considering them in context is insightful just as attempting to argue either side as absolutely correct in and of itself can be stimulating or instructive.

Perhaps what is exaggerated and abstracted so by dogmatic religions and denied or challenged by atheists is merely something that could be called nature in total and includes our own nature and immediate experience. The rest is abstraction and projection and a rather incessant clinging to immortality and some form of security that is driven by our desire to continue at all costs rather than accept this as all there is, be it thrilling and novel or horrific and detestable.

One can be comfortable with a word like spirituality in the sense of the spirit of the thing and the moment. What with a notion of the past and future being such a preoccupation in the Western mindset, (you have to get somewhere, produce, have purpose and meaning) a notion of immediate experience being "it" might seem too obvious and simply uninteresting.

We are told to assume that life must have a BIG purpose and a deep meaning. We are compelled to believe that this is so in order for there to be any intrinsic and just value to the experience of being human. We are also encouraged to entertain immortality in our projected, (imagined) future as if to extend our sense of survival at all costs into some form of forever as if our personal end is to be avoided or is someone wrong or unjust. How this is now is played down or occluded so thoroughly by culture that what actually is for us in our present awareness can seem to hardly matter at all. Yet nothing is more evident or close to what we call concrete than our very present.

[darkstar3]

7. Wrong.

Your entire first paragraph is a false premise. What evidence must an atheist give to reject the claim of a deistic existence? What faith is required in order to reject claims of deistic existence? And finally, what does the question of knowledge (gnosticism/agnosticism) have to do with the question of belief (theism/atheism)?

[Newest Reality]

8. I accept that.

The evidence required is based on the criteria of the argument.

What evidence can an atheist give to reject the claim of deistic existence? If one proposes a relative deity, it can easily be disposed of by negation or lack of evidence. If one proposes a deity that is transcendent to the functions of thought, then we can respond that no reality can be known to us that is beyond thought and that the nature of existence and the physical world are unquestionably bounded and fully defined by cognitive functions as available to our current biology and intellectual capacity in relation to the sum-total of our aquired knowledge.

You are not going to like a response that considers faith in logic and reason or materialistic science as ultimate proofs, (regardless of rigor or skill) even though they, in themselves are methodologies and preclude the conclusions they arrive at. I consider that more conducive to the stance of the agnostic who does not arrive, necessarily at a conclusion, but considers the nature of the proposition of a deity and the potential absurdity of disproving an impossible tenet as merely oneupmanship and a matter of perspective. I consider those methodologies as a method to discover, without bias, what is and would leave philosophy to ague or attempt to prove the negative: what is not. Now, from what I understand we recognize that we have not yet even begun to discover all that is as far as our Universe is concerned, and so, what is not, for us is certainly open to further discovery in that spirit. So, I guess it depends on how you want to use the methods.

As for the third question, I would ask how literally you take abstractions? Since all organisms abstract their environment and represent it to themselves via their biological structure, how different, to you, is knowledge versus belief in that respect? One does not confuse the word rock with being hit in the head by one. Do you mean knowledge as in the accumulation of information or as in a direct, subjective experience of the objective and how do you demarcate the two? One does not espouse or utilize knowledge that one believes to be untrue or erroneous, so, in that sense, one believes what one knows and might change those beliefs, (in an agnostic sense) if the information about them or understanding them changes, (as has been historically true with philosophy and physical sciences, etc.) I seem to know that I know, but that seems to be all that I know for sure. Perhaps that will make my expositions null and void.

I mean, consider modern physics and its current state about the nature of reality, time, etc. I am sure you have some interesting reprisals and potentially insightful counterpoints to my rather lazy and vacuous personal philosophy and its rather dull edge. Definitions are a key.

Perhaps this response is not satisfying or worthwhile at all.

[darkstar3]

9. The most important part of that post, as I see it: "Definitions are a key."

Some of your post deals with evidence, but it looks like most of your post is concerned with knowledge, or to be specific, "the things we know." I use that phrase because it illustrates how the word "know" or "knowledge" is often incorrectly conflated with the word "believe" or "belief". Another way to illustrate this is with a quote from Men In Black:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

I'm going to refer you to this article: http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm

It's not the most intellectually rigorous article, but it does lay out my view rather well, and shows clearly the divide between knowledge and belief.

[Newest Reality]

10. Thanks!

I will give that a gander.

[gcomeau]

3. Depends

Creator of an occasional miracle

Define "miracle". If you mean in the divine magic act sense, then it's pretty much a deity doing the performing by definition, which means no you're not an atheist.

If you mean in the "OMG! Did you see that three pointer!?!?! That was a MIRACLE!" sense... you're still good.

Cares about the life of each believer

I care about the lives of each of the people who believe I exist... to some extent at least. I'm not a diety. So, safe. You can still be an atheist and believe in this one.

Judges each person after death

Again, requires definition. "judge" as in evaluate the life they led (I can do this right now for any dead person you want to name)... or "judge" as in preside over the state of their still conscious soul and relegate them to some approriate state of afterlife?

You're good in the first case, the second one pretty much had to be a diety you're talking about and you're out of the athiest club.

Creator of the universe

Unless you're suggesting this was done in the lab of the kid down the street... we're talking dieties again with this one. No atheism for you.

Provider of moral guidance to human beings

I'll provide you with moral guidance right now. This criteria is atheism compatible.

Expects and wants to be worshiped

I guarantee I can name perfectly mundane human beings that applies to. Also athiesm compatible.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I believe in a being who meets two of the criteria.

Specifically, the last two.

I have pictures.

[ixion]

5. an atheist is the converse of a theist...

and your criteria is pretty heavily steeped in theology.

[provis99]

11. so how would the gnostic's Demiurge fit this criteria?

a deity who isn't a deity?