Any Deists, existentialists, etc.?

[_barrelomonkeys]

Oh yeah I'm a "staunch evolutionist".

What is that?

I searched for it and apparently Hitler was one as well?!

Oh dear.

[_Bond...James Bond]

Oh yeah I'm a "staunch evolutionist".

What is that?

I searched for it and apparently Hitler was one as well?!

Oh dear.

Hee...me, you, and Hitler.....sounds like quite a gang of villians. :)

[_barrelomonkeys]

Evolution and Chance:

Great website ----> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance.html

Since the first version of this essay, Dawkins published his 1996. Since Dawkins is sometimes represented denying any role in evolution for chance at all, I profer the following quotations:

It is grindingly, creakingly, obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. [Dawkins 1996: 67]

Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. one stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it is usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss they do about the 'randomness' of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection. It is not necessary that mutation should be random for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance.

Even mutations are, as a matter of fact, non-random in various senses, although these senses aren't relevant to our discussion because they don't contribute constructively to the improbable perfection of organisms. For example, mutations have well-understood physical causes, and to this extent they are non-random. ... the great majority of mutations, however caused, are random with respect to quality, and that means they are usually bad because there are more ways of getting worse than of getting better. [Dawkins 1996:70-71]

[_barrelomonkeys]

Oh yeah I'm a "staunch evolutionist".

What is that?

I searched for it and apparently Hitler was one as well?!

Oh dear.

Hee...me, you, and Hitler.....sounds like quite a gang of villians. :)

Is it safe to assume that you don't know what it is either?

[_Bond...James Bond]

Is it safe to assume that you don't know what it is either?

That's a big 10-4 on the negativeness of my knowledge. Sounds like an idea held by LOAP where "evolutionist" extends to have some sort of religious meaning, besides just being an idea about the change of lifeforms over time.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

I was throwing "staunch evolutionist" in as a sort of tongue-in-cheek option.

To clarify, does anyone believe scientific knowledge currently held precludes the likelihood of any God?

And etc.

[_cacheman]

I have strong pantheistic leanings coupled with a rather persistent agnosticism.

cacheman

[_Zoidberg]

I believe (nay, I have sure knowledge) that reality cannot be assessed independent of our perceptions. Thus, our perceptions play an important role in what we consider reality.

So I'm a theist because I feel there is a God. I fully acknowledge that there is no rational basis for it. I also belive that people who feel differently are right because their perceptions differ from mine.

So, in short, I've admitted to myself that I'm a solipsist.

[_Blixa]

I'm a non-believer. An atheist, though I don't usually fling that term around because its really a non issue with me. That's why I find fine-tuning agnostic/atheist defintions to be such hair-splitting (especially the "argument" that one must be agnostic, because atheism is illogical because you can't prove...yada, yada, yada). I don't think I ever really believed even as a child, though I did believe in fairies. But that's because I saw them.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

I'm a non-believer. An atheist, though I don't usually fling that term around because its really a non issue with me. That's why I find fine-tuning agnostic/atheist defintions to be such hair-splitting (especially the "argument" that one must be agnostic, because atheism is illogical because you can't prove...yada, yada, yada). I don't think I ever really believed even as a child, though I did believe in fairies. But that's because I saw them.

Personally I'd likely think of you as agnostic, as you aren't assuredly saying "no, there is no God, period."