The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
For some time, I’ve considered myself an agnostic atheist merely because I can’t prove that god doesn’t exist. However, I find the idea of a personal god preposterous; the likelihood of a personal god must be worse than Russell’s teapot.
A deist god on the other hand, well, I’m more circumspect. My take is that it’s a useless hypothesis that explains nothing, but it seems vaguely plausible to me that future discoveries in cosmology and physics may indicate that the universe really did “appear out of nothing” in some meaningful sense. In other words, it seems plausible to me that we might be able to prove scientifically that the universe as we know it could not exist without some “external” cause, e.g. a knob twiddler, in which case that cause could be reasonably identified with the deist’s God.
So, in retrospect, would an agnostic atheist also accept the possibility of a personal God, or can an agnostic atheist just find the God of deism possible and absolutely no on the personal God?
A deist god on the other hand, well, I’m more circumspect. My take is that it’s a useless hypothesis that explains nothing, but it seems vaguely plausible to me that future discoveries in cosmology and physics may indicate that the universe really did “appear out of nothing” in some meaningful sense. In other words, it seems plausible to me that we might be able to prove scientifically that the universe as we know it could not exist without some “external” cause, e.g. a knob twiddler, in which case that cause could be reasonably identified with the deist’s God.
So, in retrospect, would an agnostic atheist also accept the possibility of a personal God, or can an agnostic atheist just find the God of deism possible and absolutely no on the personal God?