Do I Believe in a God?
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" — Carl Sagan
Do I believe in a God? My short answer is no, but there is some nuance; I cannot say this with absolute certainty.
It's a common fallacy to assume that being non-religious means you don't believe in a God. But this isn't true—being religious (at least in the literal sense) means believing in a specific version of God and living under the rigid framework that this version imposes. Religions assign certain traits and characteristics to the concept of God—traits that often align closely with their cultural context. I disagree with these characteristics; they're heavily anthropomorphised and fail to hold up under basic logical scrutiny.
I am certainly not religious in the literal sense—in fact, I actively disagree with literalist interpretations of religion. Neither am I religious in the symbolic sense—it likely requires a degree of belief for it to be taken seriously, even in that context. I could still believe in a God despite not being religious; I find the concept interesting, but it isn't something I live my life assuming to be fact. I simply think reality is better explained without the concept of a God. Is there something more fundamental to reality? I think so. Is it a personal, infinitely (or maximally—relative to us) powerful being who has desires and intentionality? Probably not.
The Bottom Line: I don't think all literalist religious descriptions of God are false purely because of their logical flaws, paradoxes, or characteristics—I find them redundant. The concept of a God is not necessarily disproven with absolute certainty, but it likely isn't a necessary way to describe reality. To take a small theoretical possibility as an axiom, claim it as absolute truth, and then assign anthropomorphised traits that contradict hundreds of thousands of mutually exclusive religious frameworks—that's where I identify as an atheist in the practical, modern sense. But when we zoom out and consider the validity of the axioms themselves, I lean toward agnostic atheism: I don't know with certainty—but I see no reason to treat it as true.