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Determinism is bugging me big time :-(

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BushwigBill

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I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.
 

elman

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BushwigBill said:
I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.
I don't believe in hell as a place of torment after physical death.. Hell in my opinion is oblivion, non existence. God I believe wanted beings to be the object of His love and able to respond to His love with love. He knew from the beginning that giving us the ability to love required that we also have the ability to not love. He also knew that in order to have people who exists with Him who are loving they must be given the ability to not love and when that ability is given it will be used. This is the reason I believe we have been given physcial life and the reason we have the hope of recieving eternal life as a gift to those who respond to His love with love. None of us are able to be loving enough to deserve such a gift. In my opinion it makes God an evil and unloveable being to say He created us with no ability to love or not love and some of use will be given eternal life because He chose to give us the ability to love and others will not because He chose to not give them the ability.
 
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mikenet2006

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BushwigBill said:
I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.

Bingo!, I couldn't have said it better myself. Ive asked that same question in about 10 different ways, and never got a clear answer.

The most comforting thing you might hear from some is that those who are lead down the wrong path will not burn in a fiery hell of physical torture, but will rather be denied a ticket into heaven and cease to exist all together.

To me this is punishment regardless. It still reflects a God that will protect some over others based on what they came to believe with the free will they were given.

This is favoritism at its worst, and quite frankly makes God resemble Adof Hitler. To me the answer to some of those questions has become very clear with time.

God would have known that when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him, and when He created mankind and gave us free will, He would have known that the fall of man would follow.

With this knowledge at hand, punishment, or abandonment of any kind would be WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Like Ive said in many of my other post, I would rather believe in no God than one who would abandon his own for being lead to believe in alternate truths when it was God himself that gave us the ability to do so.

If you create something this complex, you are responsible for it, you care for it, and you make sure that in the end nobody is left behind. The Power and wisdom that God posses should go hand in hand with a God who knows nothing but love. Of course some things here on earth only work the way they do because pain, and hatred are a part of earths delegate balance, but this doesn't mean you reject a soul for all eternity for filling the negative part of this equation. Especially when you d**m well knew that many would fall into this category.

I'm not here to change your beliefs or the beliefs of others, but this is the way I feel, and I am quite passionate about it.


I commented specifically on free will vs. determinism here.

http://www.christianforums.com/t3064209-i-need-a-proof-for-free-will.html&page=13


Me and Elman seemed to have a similar opinion on this despite the obvious difference in religious belief we seem to have. I believe in free will, but I vary from most Christians in that I don't believe we should be responsible for our own actions in the afterlife. Our actions should reflect how great our lives will be while we exist on earth, However it should be god who takes care of us all in the afterlife.
 
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Sheva

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BushwigBill said:
I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.
Well, in my opinion you’re too caught up in trying to make everything rational. I’m a Christian too, but if I tried to make my beliefs totally consistent with logic I’d lose oh, I’d say pretty much every doctrine I hold too. If, your beliefs aren’t too out of touch with Lutheranism try buying The Foolishness of God. I just recently finished it; it was all about Luther’s view on reason. I’m not saying this to tell you about my denominational beliefs, but Luther basically held that trying to make any doctrine compatible with reason always takes away from faith. ALWAYS.

If this is a big stumbling block for you and if you are a fairly conservative (Bible believing) Christian it shouldn’t be a big deal if you put faith before reason. Truthfully, I believe that’s the problem with so many Christians today. They get so worried about fitting God into their own ideas about what makes sense or not. This question of yours could seriously harm someone’s Christian beliefs if they have decided that this is something they have to make sense off. My favorite quote of the book is “It is not Christianity that needs to be made reasonable. It is reason that needs to be made Christian.” That’s what I believe. But if your looking for a logical answer, you might be looking for some time.
 
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Tynan

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BushwigBill said:
I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.


Please don't take this in the wrong way, I cannot think of any way to say it without sounding at least a little bit like I am trying to inslult you, but here goes !

The nature of 'faith' is at odds with free-thinking, to give yourself over completely to an idea or view without challenge, investigation, question, reason, evidence or logic negates free-thought.

I am not even aiming this at you specifically, but one cannot exercise free thought whilst invested in faith.
 
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JGL53

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BushwigBill said:
I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.
BushwigBill said:

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.


As you have here, I began to recognize a number of fundamental logical impossibilities and moral contradictions with the christian religious scheme back in my twenties. Subsequently, I became a self-recognized atheist when I was about 28 years old and have been one for 29 years now.

I might suggest you consider just taking religious language as analogy, not something serious, and maybe that will help - that, and expanding your range of reading material.

Pleasant dreams.
 
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variant

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I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.

The simplest explanation is that if a God exists, we humans don't understand it well.

If the stories you are basing this problem on are essentially true, the seeming contradictions you are worried about either betray our inability to understand the facts of the matter, or the motivations, attributes, or dispositions of the characters.

So, most of your premises about God are free to be false.
 
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Im_A

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I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.
well i wonder if the varying answers will depend on what view one holds in the afterlife...meaning like eternal torment, annihalationism, universal reconciliation.

i believe in universal reconciliation. part of the process of changing this view was issues you brought up (btw, i'm not trying to convince you to believe in universal reconciliation, but if it may help you with this questioning you have, i hope it does, and if not, just pass it on by :) )

in regards to the afterlife, i do not believe in free-will, actually, i'd probably go as far to say it is blasphemous to say that we have any control of our soul and where it goes, but since i'm in no authority position to dictate what is blasphemey or not, i'll pass on making the claim, but the point is still there. why would a sovereign God give a being control over their own souls, when that being doesn't have the power to create or kill the soul, and only "God" has that power? to assume that you have control would put you almost on the same level as God Himself, and that within itself has enough conflictions in my opinion. how can a finite being even be remotelesly close to an infinite being?

and why would God give someone the power to control their souls if the idea that we are born in sin and condemned since birth, or if some wants to bring in the age of accountability, which is a funny idea if you ask me. an idea that seems to state the people after a certain age that hasn't even been given a set defining age, starts to be condemened because of their knowledge of right and wrong beginning to mature, but that being is was born into sin anyways...too dualistic to say the least.

and that's another point. the dualistic nature in this stinks up to high heaven. a fallen being, that just by using it's own nature, would never choose heaven. so here we have a dualistic battle between the will of man and the will of God.

and on a personal note, i trust a being who can create and kill my soul, over my own struggles and progression in my life leading me to some comfy place in the afterlife.

now in regards to this life, i think it is rather obvious that free-will is true, but then again, i always appreciate the opposing the side, because the influences that one makes their "free-will" choice in is pretty interesting. makes you wonder if we are really in control of anything in our lives. when emotions get high, people do things they wouldn't normally want to do, or they do things that they would normally want to do. family history, social influences all put an interesting light on free-will in my opinion, but in regards to the afterlife, i'm a blatant deterministic kind of fella. God's Will and God getting His Will and Job done is more important than human beings being given democratic free-will in my opinon. in the here and now, i really don't know where i stand on the issue of determinism vs free-will.

God Bless you!
 
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relaxeus

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So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell?

Here are some possible answers:

1. God is not all loving
2. God does not exist
3. God does exist but hell isn't real, instead it was an idea created by man
 
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Tenka

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I have seen a few Christians in apologetics freewill Vs determinism threads that have no problem with accepting determinism.
I think their argument is that God is all powerful so of course nothing would happen without him wanting it to happen and since he is loving then everything should turn out okay.

When I see Christians argue against determinism it always sounds like God setting up a domino chain and then knocking over the first one, then as the pieces fall in turn the Christian tells me "See? freewill exists God only touched one domino!"

It really comes down to this, If you believe your God is powerful and loving do you really think he would allow a place like hell to exist?
 
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I'm a Christian. Always have been. But I've always liked to think of myself as pretty free-thinking.

Lately I've been wondering, if God knows everything, He must have known when he created Lucifer that he would rebel against Him. And when He created mankind and gave us free will, He knew that the fall of man would follow.

So my question to everyone is: Why does a loving God create a person, knowing that they will reject Him and go to Hell? And do we really have a choice in whether we accept or reject God, or does it all just come down to the way He chose to create us?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.


Does a parent not have a child because the child won't be perfect and will make mistakes? No....why do you think God is any different. And you either believe God or not. He said He set before us life or death and asked us to choose life and He also said He doesn't want anyone to perish. By saying we have no freewill, you are saying God plans for folks to go to hell and wants them to go there, which is unbiblical in every way. He created us with freewill to make choices to serve Him or ourselves....just because He knows what we will do doesn't mean He authored or willed us to do it.
 
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JGL53

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Does a parent not have a child because the child won't be perfect and will make mistakes? No....why do you think God is any different. And you either believe God or not. He said He set before us life or death and asked us to choose life and He also said He doesn't want anyone to perish. By saying we have no freewill, you are saying God plans for folks to go to hell and wants them to go there, which is unbiblical in every way. He created us with freewill to make choices to serve Him or ourselves....just because He knows what we will do doesn't mean He authored or willed us to do it.

Right off the bat I see three very big problems with your theological exegesis. I will not bother to point them out. I feel confident that BushwigBill and others will discern them quite easily.

I feel confident that you mean well - but I might suggest you just stick with faith, and not bother with logical argument and apologetics. The problems that you deal with here cannot be solved, sensibly explained or made to go away through apologetics.

These type problems are the very ones that are confusing BwB. By essentially demonstrating their intractability, you are simply giving those like BwB more and more reason to think outside the box - to cosider alternative interpretations of reality. And you know to where that might very well lead.

Have a nice day.
 
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Tenka

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LOTV said:
Does a parent not have a child because the child won't be perfect and will make mistakes? No....why do you think God is any different.
Because as you always tell us, "God's ways are not our ways". Plus humans don't have the benefit of omnipotence and such.
By saying we have no freewill, you are saying God plans for folks to go to hell and wants them to go there, which is unbiblical in every way.
Is God's will done on earth as it is in heaven? or is he just a passive observer?
He created us with freewill to make choices to serve Him or ourselves....just because He knows what we will do doesn't mean He authored or willed us to do it.
If you believe that our choices are affected by things then God created the conditions that would lead us to make those choices, good or bad.
If you believe that we would have made those choices given any situation then that isn't freewill either.

God IS the author, he created knowing what would happen if he made things that way.
God DID will it all to happen when he created according to his will.
 
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elman

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Please don't take this in the wrong way, I cannot think of any way to say it without sounding at least a little bit like I am trying to inslult you, but here goes !

The nature of 'faith' is at odds with free-thinking, to give yourself over completely to an idea or view without challenge, investigation, question, reason, evidence or logic negates free-thought.

I am not even aiming this at you specifically, but one cannot exercise free thought whilst invested in faith.

God gave us our ability to reason and He wants us to use this gift. We work out our own salvation according to the scriptures. God invites us to reason with Him. We are admonisted by scriptres to be ready to give an answer to anyone that asks why we believe. The scriptures says one group was more noble than another because they searched the scriptures to see if what they were being told was true. We are not called to blind unreasonable obedience.
 
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Venger

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A couple of points...

If you're going to assert that faith is required to believe in something, then you must be prepared to accept that this belief cannot be taken on its own merits.

As for the choice and reason argument, I find this highly fallable. Free-will is a concept beyond reason, and has yet to be established as a scientific possibility. Even arguments such as compatibilism fail in that there is no way to observe a person making a choice, whereas we can easily trace every decision back to causic factors. i.e., I "choose" to eat because I was hungry, not because my mind or soul is driven by an unexplainable agency of free will.

If god is omnipotent, then surely it has preordained every aspect of existence, otherwise this fails to explain how it posesses knowledge of the past, present and future simultaneously. Keeping this in mind, we can conclude that god has also consigned each individual to Heaven or Hell of his own will. (rather, god started the chain of preordained events in knowing which people would do good and which would do evil) This would rob life of any significance or purpose, which is partly why I think that monotheism is wrong.
 
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Skillganon

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Here's one of the answer:
based on Dr. Ja`far Sheikh Idris’s article “Belief in Qadar”.

The original meaning of the Arabic word qadar is a specified measure or amount whether of quantities or qualities. It has many other usages, which branch out from this core. Almighty Allah says, “We have created every thing by measure (bi-qadar).” (Al-Qamar: 49)

Allah (Mighty and Exalted bre He) knows before creating anything, that He is going to create it and that it shall be of such and such magnitude, quality or nature, etc. He also specifies the time of its coming into being and its passing away, and the place of its occurrence. If so, then one who believes in the true God should believe that there are no accidents in nature. If something disagreeable happens to him, he should say “Allah qaddara (ordained), and He did what He willed” and not grieve himself by wishing that it had not occurred, or worrying why it should occur. If, in contrast, something agreeable happens to him he should not boast of it, but thank Allah for it. In this context, Allah says, “Naught of disaster befalleth in the earth or in yourselves but it is in a Book before We bring it into being. Lo! That is easy for Allah. That ye grieve not for the sake of that which hath escaped you, nor yet exult because of that which hath been given. Allah loveth not all prideful boasters.” (Al-Hadid: 22-23)

If Allah Almighty predetermines everything, that includes our so-called free actions, in what way can they be said to be free, and how are we responsible for them? This question occasioned the appearance, at a very early history of Islam, of two extreme theological sects. One of them, called the Qadariyyah, asserted man’s free will and responsibility to the extent of denying Allah’s foreknowledge, and claiming that Allah knows our free made actions only after we have performed them. The other, called the Jabriyyah, held the opposite view and claimed that there was no difference between the motions of inanimate things and our movements in performing so-called free actions, and that when we use intentional language we speak only metaphorically.

But there is no need to go to such extremes, since it is not difficult to reconcile Divine qadar (predestination) and human responsibility. Allah decided to create man as a free agent, but He knows (and how can He not know!) before creating every man how he is going to use his free will; what, for instance, his reaction would be when a Prophet clarifies Allah’s message to him. This foreknowledge and its registering in a ‘Book’ is called qadar.

“But if we are free to use our will” a Qadari might say, “we may use it in ways that contradict Allah’s will, and in that case we would not be right in claiming that everything is willed or decreed by Allah.”

The Qur’an answers this question by reminding us that it was Allah who willed that we shall be of free will, and it is He who allows us to use our will. Allah, Most High, says, “Lo! This is an Admonishment, that whosoever will may choose a way unto his Lord. Yet ye will not, unless Allah willeth. Lo! Allah is Knower, Wise.” (Al-Insan: 29-30)

“If so,” a Qadari might say, “He could have prevented us from doing evil."

Yes indeed He could. Allah says, “Had Allah willed, He would have brought them all together to the guidance; if thy Lord had willed whoever is in the earth would have believed, all of them, all together.” (Yunus: 99) “Had Allah willed, they were not idolaters; and We have not appointed thee a watcher over them neither art thou their guardian.” (Al-An`am: 107)

But Allah has willed that men shall be free especially in regard to matters of belief and disbelief. Allah Almighty says, “Say: The truth is from your Lord; so let whosoever will believe, and let whosoever will disbelieve.” (Al-Kahf: 29)

But men would not be so free if whenever any of them wills to do evil Allah prevents him from doing it and compels him to do good.

“If our actions are willed by Allah,” someone might say, “then they are in fact His actions.”

This objection is based on a confusion that Allah wills what we will in the sense of granting us the will to choose and enabling us to execute that will, i.e., He creates all that makes it possible for us to do it. He does not will it in the sense of doing it, otherwise it would be quite in order to say, when we drink or eat or sleep for instance that Allah performed these actions. Allah creates them, He does not do or perform them.

Another objection, based on another confusion, is that if Allah allows us to do evil, then He approves of it and likes it.

However, to will something in the sense of allowing a person to do it is one thing; and to approve of his action and commend it, is quite another, NOT everything that Allah wills He likes. He has, as we have just read in the Qur’an, granted man the choice between belief and disbelief, but He does not, of course, like men to disbelieve (to be thankless). Allah Almighty says, “If you art ungrateful, Allah is independent of you. Yet He approves not ungratefulness in His servants; but if you are grateful, He will approve it in you.” (Az-Zumar: 7)”

Hope that helps, and benefit anyone their.

Salam

Skill
 
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allthatisgone

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Well, in my opinion you’re too caught up in trying to make everything rational. I’m a Christian too, but if I tried to make my beliefs totally consistent with logic I’d lose oh, I’d say pretty much every doctrine I hold too. If, your beliefs aren’t too out of touch with Lutheranism try buying The Foolishness of God. I just recently finished it; it was all about Luther’s view on reason. I’m not saying this to tell you about my denominational beliefs, but Luther basically held that trying to make any doctrine compatible with reason always takes away from faith. ALWAYS.

If this is a big stumbling block for you and if you are a fairly conservative (Bible believing) Christian it shouldn’t be a big deal if you put faith before reason. Truthfully, I believe that’s the problem with so many Christians today. They get so worried about fitting God into their own ideas about what makes sense or not. This question of yours could seriously harm someone’s Christian beliefs if they have decided that this is something they have to make sense off. My favorite quote of the book is “It is not Christianity that needs to be made reasonable. It is reason that needs to be made Christian.” That’s what I believe. But if your looking for a logical answer, you might be looking for some time.

:)
 
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Tynan

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God gave us our ability to reason and He wants us to use this gift. We work out our own salvation according to the scriptures. God invites us to reason with Him. We are admonisted by scriptres to be ready to give an answer to anyone that asks why we believe. The scriptures says one group was more noble than another because they searched the scriptures to see if what they were being told was true. We are not called to blind unreasonable obedience.

Your belief is faith based, it is a belief in god or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof, therefore is not based on reason.

You are simply wrong.
 
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moogoob

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Your belief is faith based, it is a belief in god or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof, therefore is not based on reason.

You are simply wrong.

Not all people beleive a religion/belief based on reason. In fact, very few do. Deists, Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists... maybe Universalists and Buddhists. The rest is based on faith rather than reason. They're not wrong, they just think differently than you do.
 
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