This is mostly to supplement a few ongoing threads about atheism, faith and the existence of God, so I'd like to post a poll with the "spectrum of probability" that Richard Dawkins (a vocal level 6 atheist and evolutionary biologist) uses in The God Delusion.

The spectrum is continuous but it can be represented with the seven milestones.

OK. Sounds interesting. Where's the poll?

Patience, young padawan, I was typing it and had the urge for some Jaffa Cakes

Sorry. Guess I got a little antsy.

I took the only logical choice: There is almost surely not one, but there is still some possibility.

It just wouldn't be the Christian one, nor any one with any sort of active role that is shaped by petition.

Being a raving poof, I get a lot of hassle from the religious lot over my sexuality. If they can treat their fellow mankind like that, then they fail to practice what they preach etc.

Yep, but the worst part about religion is that many of them are actually reasonable and sensible so I can't just disregard all of them as crazy unfortunately

"a sensible man can hold any number of senseless beliefs it is human nature to do so, logic exists to separate sensible ideas from senseless ones by testing them to the point of breakage"

there are many reasoning theists, but they generally seem to box off religion as something that cant be reasoned, which is wrong, everything should be subject to the same standards.

True, but its hard to define God in most religions

I voted #6 above based on the assumption that the poll referred to a loving, caring , ubiquitous God otherwise known as the Western God.
However, in contrast I also believe it to be almost impossible that there are not, somewhere in the universe, beings who are more masters of their environment than we are and therefore can be considered to be superior beings.
If this imposes some level of deification on them (in our eyes), then I would have to revise my conclusion.

#5 here. No offense, but I'm surprised there were so many #1's. Glad we have some variety on the forum.

Precisely why all these matters are so complicated. The moment you declare one belief a farse, you're met by a bunch of intelligent seeming people who disagree.

Dawkins' book aims at supernaturalism in general, and though he does clarify the difference between a pantheistic notion of some sort of supernatural vs. traditional theism, I think his spectrum is mean to apply to any notion of God or gods.

Good point -- and Dawkins spends no inconsiderable amount of verbiage discounting the idea of science & religion as separate realms of truth-seeking.

SigmaX

My problem with this pole & most discussions in the forums (both here & the backyard) is that we are basically talking about the Judaic/Christian God, or at the least a religious God, all forms of God that I find to be totally insufficient & therefore unsatisfactory definitions of God. These gods have had too much human intervention involved in their creation.

Therefore I can not vote in this pole, due to the lack of a definition of God that is infinitely variable, omnipresent, omniscient, nonjudgmental, made of love, wisdom energy & not made by man...

The problem is that most of us are Westerners and are only exposed to the Western religions. I've been branching out on my reading somewhat but I don't care so much about other religions because they're not the big political influences in America. Further, if I come to the conclusion that a religion is full of it why would I wish to continue learning more about it?

Oh! I hadn't realised that this forum was all about seeing things from the bias of the US. I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.

I don't think it's intended to be that way, but it is an English internet site, so the majority of the posters are going to be from the Western world - the US, Canada, Europe. The dominant religion in these areas is christianity.

Unfortunately bias is a limitation on freedom that we all have to live with...

i'd like to hear more details about your beliefs if it was not listed as option in the poll.

i can summarize my own views as such:
i also personally think that some day in the distant future, we're going to look back on civilization and be very embarrassed that we ever thought "God" was a plausible idea.

Okay let me retrospectively define "God" with a capital G in this case, the Western God of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

-The only God
-The creator
-Personal God
-Holy God (pure/above everything else)
-Omnipotent (all powerful)
-Omniscient (all seeing/knowing)
-Benevolent (all good/loving)
-Immutable (never changes)

The logical definition above contains a good few arguments for his non-existence if you look closely Such as how can God be benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent but still allow suffering/evil?

JoshJ
Handy is from Oz - meaning Australia I would assume.
Last time I looked we were part of the Western world in a geopolit)ical sense.
Physically there is a debate here whether it is Asia or Oceania

btw I would also hope to assume that you include the United Kingdom in Europe? There are a few other major English speaking countries too (South Africa, New Zealand) and a lot of smaller ones.

What bias would you prefer? Something has to be dominant, even if it's atheism.

SigmaX