You are getting into Agnostic or Pagan territory, definitely not Atheist.
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then why capitalize the g? it's not a named entity and has no name as it is a universal experience.
(it sounds like what you're calling god is, well, reality of ... living, >being conscious > having consciousness > the consciousness'es experiences. )
I've heard it referred to as the aathma.
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That's called pantheism. It's technically a belief in a deity. Whether it has all the worst qualities of organized religion or dogmatism is another matter.
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There is a parasite that can enter the human body through the urethra, migrate through the bloodstream, and eventually make its way to the eyes, where it destroys the delicate tissues responsible for sight, potentially leaving its host permanently blind.
Lion cubs, while learning to hunt, have been observed eating their prey alive, not out of malice, but simply because nature has yet to teach them the efficiency of killing.
There are plants, growing in ordinary urban environments, that are so poisonous that a curious child can eat a few leaves and die.
Cancer is as much a part of the natural world as the trees, the mountains, and the oceans.
So I have to ask: What exactly are you seeing in this world that you consider divine?
The beauty of nature? Of course. I've driven through the Smoky Mountains and traveled through the wilderness of Canada. I've stood before landscapes so breathtaking that they almost seem impossible. But there's a certain privilege in appreciating the beauty of nature from behind the glass of a car, traveling along a modern highway, protected from the very wilderness we're admiring.
Because beneath that beauty is a world that is indifferent to our existence. A world of parasites, disease, predation, starvation, and suffering. A world where a creature can spend its final moments being eaten alive, where a child can die from a handful of leaves, and where a perfectly healthy body can become a breeding ground for its own destruction.
I see the beauty. I really do. I just don't have the luxury of pretending it exists independently of the horror.
I see the same mountains you see, the same forests, the same extraordinary complexity of life. But I also see the child armies, the genocides, the famines, the diseases, and the seemingly endless capacity of humanity to inflict suffering upon itself. I see a universe in which suffering is not an exception, a deviation, or some unfortunate interruption of an otherwise benevolent design. It is woven into the very fabric of existence.
And perhaps that's the fundamental difference between us. You're looking at the beauty of the world and interpreting it as evidence of something divine. I'm looking at that same world, with all its beauty and brutality, and seeing no evidence of anything other than nature doing precisely what nature does.
There is no discernible benevolence behind it. No cosmic justice. No grand moral architecture ensuring that the innocent are spared or that suffering serves some greater purpose.
The universe doesn't hate us. It doesn't love us, either. It simply exists, indifferent to whether we flourish, suffer, or disappear.
And what we call beauty, horror, good, and evil are ultimately experiences filtered through the extraordinary but imperfect machinery of our own minds.
I don't find that depressing because I fail to appreciate the world. I find it sobering because I appreciate it enough to see all of it.
There is beauty in this universe. There is also unimaginable cruelty. Neither requires a divine explanation. And I see no compelling reason to pretend otherwise.
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Maybe pantheism is for you
I guess it matters where the line is between God and Not a God. The Tao is a force that pulls all things towards their intended destination, but it isn't considered a "god", as in a sentient being. It's more like a magnetic field than like a diety.
Above all, I would say it really depends on your definition of this "not a God". As nonsensical as it is, the flying Spaghetti Monster is a sentient being, and thus a God, even if you wanted to claim otherwise. If your "Not God" is an abstract name for natural Earth cycles, then I'd call that atheist.
No.
I would say no, but I would also say that’s not a very useful view of god.
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divine ... sacred ... God
Definitely neither atheist nor agnostic.
At this point, caring about what label one puts on belief is pretty pointless.
I heard someone say this "There is a Higher Power out there, and I'm not it."
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You should listen to Alan Watts "Dream of Life"
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Consider deism. If you think it's all conscious, panpsychism. Not theistic in the sense of a god that intervenes personally with miracles and such, and plenty of regimes would still imprison you or worse with a charge of "atheism".
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Look into Robert Anton Wilson
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That’s up to you; it’s a free world mate.
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This is more or less the definition of being Agnostic. You don't subscribe to any of the major organized religions, but you still believe there is more out there than "the mundane."
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Why do you want to be oppressed?
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Have you ever heard of discordianism
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well some say god is love or vice versa. both are concepts about feeling with no realworld type physical evidence. granted some may talk about pheromones or attraction but that is the problem with concepts like that when they get both put on a pedestal and rationalized into our existence.
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According to my dictionary, it says the word means : Someone who does not believe in the existence of a god. So i don't think so.
Read the whole thread instead of answering the label question. Something repeats.
Every answer that lands on the word God gets answered about a different God. DjangoFett says agnostic, you say you don't believe someone created it. YragNitram1956 posts the Dawkins list, you say you don't believe in that God and you're not American. imsufferableninja says words mean things, you say "everyone has their own truth."
None of them can land. Nobody in here is talking about the same object twice. And you said it yourself in the post: the word is "vague af, it can mean anything yet means nothing." You named the trap and then handed people the key to it fifteen times.
So the question under the question is not what you are. It's whether there's a name that costs you nothing at home. You explained that in the reply about your family and your country. A label that doesn't travel there isn't a hole in your reasoning. It's the only kind available to you right now.
If I've got the wrong hinge, say so, that changes the read. And if the thing you actually keep going around with is one person and not a label, paste the exchange here. I'll read that one instead.
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My view is that atheism rejects the concept of a "conscious being" type god, but neither accepts nor rejects the "unconscious force" type.
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