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scav comments on Being a Realist (even if you believe in God) - Less Wrong Discussion
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Maybe, if you have modelled where I am now accurately.
I don't identify as an atheist because I don't reject theism. I'm actually more of an untheist, in that I have no epistemological basis for believing in any particular god, but I don't rule out every possible view of the divine, including for example a universal ethical theorem for sentient life which we have glimpsed fragments of but can't prove yet. Or, you know, something weird.
If, when you say "God", you actually mean "universal ethical theorem for sentient life" or something other than "supernatural being that created/help create the world", you're probably best off coming up with a different word; the one you're currently using has been hopelessly entangled in its present context, and continuing to use it for something other than that will only result in confusion.
I'm probably done using that word here anyway :)
But I don't think a word can truly be "hopelessly entangled in its present context". Apart from anything else, the present is a moving target, and people's ideas of divinity are incredibly diverse already. I could talk about a mathematical god-as-theorem at a Quaker meeting for example, and nobody would raise an eyebrow.
While I'm here, as a matter of politeness, I will entertain the community consensus of god as "imaginary friend" if you like.
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Please stop abusing the language. :) You do not fall into the cluster of beliefs that most people understand "christian" to signify. You do yourself no favors by using nonstandard meanings for words...
Is this a "no true Scotsman" situation? When I became and was baptised as a Christian, what made me so was acceptance of Jesus' teachings. Since I haven't rejected them as ethical heuristics and general good advice, I feel entitled to keep using that adjective, while reserving judgement on other beliefs that "most people understand 'christian' to signify".
I literally DO NOT SEE how this is a problem, given that the whole point of my article was that when you are a realist you don't have to carry around beliefs and ways of thinking that are imposed by anything other than objective reality. That totally includes what "most people" think "christian" means.
Also, it's a waste of time discussing it here. Among theists, it's a talking point that can maybe lead others who identify as "christian" to realise that they don't need to believe everything they are told in order to be the person they want to be in relationship with a God that is real to them. Among rationalists it's apparently just an annoying distraction. If all you're saying is I shouldn't have mentioned it, yes, I'm beginning to think so :)
I think you should avoid giving yourself a label at all in that case ("Keep your identity small"). Tacking "Christian" in front of "realist" makes your position less clear, not more clear. I can see doing that if you're trying to exploit in-group bias or something, but I think it's much healthier to be honest to yourself about what you're doing.
Is this true? Did you at the time think that Jesus had performed miracles, or died and been resurrected? More to the point, whether you had or not, and if you hadn't, and had told the people who were baptizing you that you hadn't, would they have gone through with the baptism?
Not really. There's a problem here that some terms have fuzzy boundaries and yet come with all sorts of connotative baggage. In the case of "Christian" the boundaries are somewhat blurry, but when one self-identifies as Christian one is triggering a whole host of connotations and emotional, tribal aspects, whether or not one hits a standard definition of the term.
To use a slightly more extreme example, if I started calling myself Christian, simply because I like some aspects of Jesus's teachings, and yet don't believe in any supernatural connection to Jesus, and have never been baptized, and semi-regularly go to Jewish services and no Christian ones, one would probably see something at best confusing about this choice. Thinking about this in terms of some abstraction like bleggs might help.
Neither do I, but I'm definitely an atheist. You can be unable to rule out a possibility without lending it any credence.
You can take it beyond the possibility of gods. Everything I think I know about logic and reasoning might be wrong. The universe might be held together by dream physics. I can't rule the possibility out, but I can dismiss it as remote to the point of irrelevance.