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- Like you, I don't like to call myself an atheist. Not because of the reddit atheism community, I am not familiar with them, but because to me atheists seem too certain that God does not exist.
Most that identify themselves as Atheists do not claim to be certain that a God by any meaningful definition does not exist. They instead say that it has the same probability as faeries or santa clause existing. The distinction between exceedingly improbable and impossible is inconsequential and not worth considering.
thenewgreen · 4597 days ago · link ·
To make such a comparison, there would need to be baseline understanding of what "god" meant. It's about the most loaded word in the entire lexicon. If it means an all knowing bearded figure that spends it's time in a mystical place called "heaven" devising grand plots on how to grant free will and then punish people for exercising it, then YES I agree with your comparison to faeries and santa. But if it means a creator, or a source of life that is beyond my knowing... this is less "santa-ish".
That said, I have no proof of either the santa version or otherwise. But still, I can't unabashedly claim there is no "creator".
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This is why I used the term "by any meaningful definition". A God that is only a creator of the universe is indistinguishable from a law of physics that we do not fully understand yet and would certainly not value faith or religion, so a fairly meaningless definition of God. If God is the creator of life on earth specifically and cares what happens to us we are back into faerie land.
In summary, Unless your definition of God is so loose as to be indistinguishable from chance or physics then it's likelihood approaches zero.