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Originally Posted by Vinterland  You cannot say you deny the existence of any god, Christian, deist or whatever and call yourself an agnostic unless you want to be a hypocrite (and many "agnostics" are indeed). You will have a great task at hand proving there are any religions invented by human cultures. |
I knew I was a weird one, because I feel like a "strong" atheist when it comes to the gods of our human cultures, but agnostic towards that extraterrestrial entity that could be the prime mover of our universe. But I don't understand why you say I can't regard every religion and conception of god that arose here on earth as mere inventions of human cultures. For example, Christianity was the product of the Hellenistic Jewish culture in the 1st century. Islam was the product of medieval Arabic culture and specifically that of its prophet Mohammed, and so on. It's not a big deal.
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None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.
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I don't understand Russell's hesitation to deny those gods' existence. A "logical proposition" to disprove those gods' existence isn't even needed or proper because the people who introduced those gods to the world never gave a "logical proposition" to affirm their existence. They are mere elements of Greek folklore. They are as dead as the ancient Greeks themselves.