Fascinating discussion, and very well-behaved; im impressed! This is a great exchange
From historical things Id seen over time, it seemed like Einstein was relatively agnostic. Using English terms to describe levels of religious faith can be dicey, especially when people who marginally use it or you have different countries the variations of English are coming from.
The word atheist from Greek I had heard was used more from people whose mindset was that they believed firmly that there was no God, or in the back of their mind they knew there was God but they had decided to stick out their lower lip, cross their arms and *not believe* in the form of turning their back and spiritually turning away purposely with desires of rejection.
Agnostic from what I’d gathered from people who had called themselves such, were on the fence not really knowing, not rejecting, just being of the mind that if there were proof someday they could follow or acknowledge the existence, not much emotion or angst either way. In my small and humble opinion a good number of very vocal atheists had had a life event which made them angry or resentful of what they knew as God and had pronounceable turned and rejected. Im sure there are many others who feel science shows fully to them that testing hasnt shown a god so its not possible for Him to exist.
A few here have made good points about how do you prove or disprove existence of something that would expectedly be so much bigger than we are; modern science shows clearly that at certain physical states of higher or lower gravity, temperature, pressure and etcetera, the laws of physics and all seem to change. We strain to see and understand our internal and external world by our faint senses, equipment and mental processes... it has been my thought that our universe which we see and interpret as having been around for billions or googleplex oodles of years, could very well be the swirl of gases and sparks in the initially forming edge of a flame, on top of a match that God has struck to light his pipe
. If how atoms and particles interact and things form changed by when an action or reaction process point has progressed, we could have trillions of lifetimes in the span of another existence just barely having started. We would never be able to measure. Science is just us scratching around trying to find appropriate yardsticks with which to try and make sense of what we have just barely begun to realize exists around us. For people to make such huge statements and pronouncements of what is or isnt, really is them making their own religion to prove there isnt a God, and wanting to fend off the others who say that there is One
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