Posted on 01/06/2005 9:12:28 AM PST by missyme
> Muslims believe in the God of the old testament.
That is rather argueable. "Allah" was originally the moon god of the pre-Islamic Arab pagans, and the patron god of Mecca (maybe it was Median, I forget)... sort of like Athena, patron (matron?) goddess of Athens. Mohammad built his new monotheistic religion aroudn the patron god of his home town, and incorporated bits of both Judaism and Christianity.
So... Allah is as much the Judeo-Christian god as Zeus or Odin would be had the ancient Greeks or Norse reformed their religions to include said gods as the *sole* god with Judeo-Christian aspects.
Who or what do they base their beliefs in?
I knew you were going to come back with something like this. You are very confused. Agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve, but are willing to let the question remain open in the absence of what they consider objective proof. Atheists say "There is no God" and agnostics say "I do not know whether there is a God." But agnostics do not deny that there is one.
Buddhists do not believe in the top-down God of Judaism and Christianity, but they acknowledge that there is a greater universal thought substance of which we are all apart.
Avatamsaka Sutra says, "If you want to understand that all the three worlds are Buddha, you must perceive world substance. All things are created by mind alone." This means that if you want to understand the true way you must perceive where name and form come from and you must understand that name and form are created by mind. In this world, one by one, each thing is complete; one by one, each thing has substance. If you cut off all thinking, return to before thinking then this is your substance and universal substance. We call this 'primary point'. If you keep this mind, you and everything, you and the universe, become one. Clear like space, without name and form, without opposites, that is the Absolute. We call it Mind or Buddha or God or Truth or Energy. This is Shim.
So as you see, Buddhists do believe in God, albeit not the one that looks like an old man with a beard and sits on a cloud in heaven. But I don't believe in that one either, although I do very much believe in the existence of God.
Hindus believe in divinity, although they are not monotheistic.
Muslims most certainly believe in God, although I believe their conception of God is evil. But they do believe in God even if they call him Allah. In fact, they claim to believe in the God of Moses and the one Jesus claimed to be the offspring of.
My wiccan friends tell me that they believe in a plethora of Gods, and so are not monotheistic.
I don't have any animist friends, but even they believe in divinity of a sort, if I recall correctly from my college sociology courses.
All of these belief systems may have different conceptions of the spiritual entity (entities) at the core of existnece, but only atheists believe that there is absolutely no type of divine spirit underlying the material universe.
Sorry, no... that was Communism. They bleated about Atheism, but they weren't. They simply replaced one god with another...
Sorry, but that's what atheists do, even if they are gentle and caring and not Communists. It's our nature as human beings to do that. The communists were just particularly vicious about it. If you don't believe in God, you have to believe in something.
Just goes to show that those who oppose the "religious right" are in league with the "religious left," those who preach the fundamentalist dogma of marxism.
> Agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve
And thus, they do not believe in god. My point stands.
> If you don't believe in God, you have to believe in something.
I believe in what I can see and/or test. Anything beyond that is speculation.
Ah . . . but they do not disbelieve, either. Therefore, my point stands as well.
Bump for a great comment.
Your point does NOT stand. Your original statement was:
"I find it hard to understand how you can claim that there is such thing as a person who does not believe in God and yet is not an atheist. "
An agnostic does not believe in God. An agnostic is not an atheist.
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