SwimmingRock said:
Atheism: We (and the universe) are a random accident with no meaning, significance, purpose or intrinsic value.
Agnosticism (his variant, that is. I know it's a complex term with multiple interpretations): A being wise and powerful enough to create a fully functioning, perfectly consistent and logical universe decided that humans are the best of all possible life-forms and that we deserve to have an entire universe just for ourselves.
Perplexing.
Personally I describe myself as a skeptic agnostic rather than atheist. This because most definitions of atheism and even many atheists themselves seem to have reached the conclusion that there is no god or any godlike beings. I find that statement to be unscientific, mainly because man (even as a scientist) is flawed in the way that it is only capable of experiencing three dimensions, when science show clear suggestions that reality might very well be composed of a lot more dimensions than that. For instance we know that another dimension beyond the usual three exists (time) but we can't really perceive time, we can only witness the after effects of it.
So it's not particularly scientific to say that gods don't or cannot exist at all like many atheists do (although some don't but still call themselves atheist, I've just chosen my definition as skeptic agnostic to make a distinction). I mean who are we to claim that beings or intelligences from dimensions beyond the ones we can perceive are impossible, or that they might very well come across as quite godlike to us? It doesn't make any sense.
That being said, the skeptic side of my agnosticism, while acknowledge the possibility of the existence of godlike beings does demand a hefty degree of evidence if someone is to claim that there is a god or several gods. Also my skepticism is extremely prevalent when it comes to the supposed descriptions of God and what he/she/it is like and that he/she/it actually has a plan for mankind and desire specific behaviour from men. Pretty much all religious texts are too full of inconsistencies regarding the attributes about the gods in question, hence that source material can't reasonably be considered reliable from a scientific standpoint.
So as for devout and religious people, while I might be able to pick apart their ideas of what their god is like and argue why their god's supposed attributes are faulty, I can't scientifically claim that the existence of a godlike being is inherently impossible. We just don't know enough about the multiverse and it's many dimensions to make such bold claims.
Perhaps this line of thinking might be something he had "converted" to?