Belief in God spectrum/Talk

'Personal statements' might belong on you own profile page, or under Wikipedia commentary, but not in regular articles. The request that others 'please don't edit' is against the spirit of the Wikipedia project. I think this page should remain but should be open to everyone's input. - Tim

tim's right - make it a personal page if you want it left alone. - MB

Hmm, ok

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I don't think that most or even many theists believe that "they have adequate evidence" for God's existence. They just believe that God exists, period. It's possible to believe stuff without enough evidence, isn't it? Theists like Kierkegaard actually thought that the absense of evidence and the contradictions in their religion strengthened their faith. --AxelBoldt

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Short of a reference to some famous philosopher or theologian (or other scholar of religion), this looks like, essentially, original research: it posits that there is a philosophically interesting "belief in God spectrum." I'm not sure there is much interest in this. I imagine the different positions on the existence of God or gods would better be placed on God or [the existence of God]? or [different positions on the existence of the divine]? or something like that. A simple listing of the different positions one can hold with respect to the existence of the divine is very interesting, and it does belong somewhere in Wikipedia--but probably not on this page. This article could live, of course, on Wikipedia commentary under this title. --LMS

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I doubt any serious philosopher can be found who would endorse this. As I see it, it is logically flawed insofar as conflates two very different questions: questions about the degree of certainty one might have concerning the existence of a divine being, and questions about the nature and quality of that divine being. I mean really, it is pretty clear that questions about the number of divine beings that exist should be understood as a separate issue to be considered only after one determines if there is or could be any divine being. But the question of what might count as a "divine being" would need to be addressed before addressing the question of weather any such being exists.

Anyway, I think this page makes very little sense as it is, and needs to be moved to commentary. Even as commentary, it needs to be radically altered to be of much use. Perhaps a multi dimensional matrix would allow you to separate our the different questions. But since I think most of the questions don't lend themselves to a scalar representation, since they present only a small number of possible answers, which are distinct and non-contiguous. In other words: either god exists, or he does not; either there's either one god or there are many gods; either god is defined as a non-contingent being, or he is not.

...or there is no 'he', but...

Anyway, in order to turn this into something which accurately describes the way beliefs about the divine actually exist, it would need to be radically changed. MRC

Unless I see a specific responce to the points made above, and in LMS's post, i'll be moving the text of this article to Wikipedia commentary tomorow (thursday October 17th). MRC