There are four types of mindsets when it comes to religion:
1. gnostic theist: "I know that my god(s) is/are real."
2. agnostic theist: "I believe that my god(s) is/are real, but I am aware to not know this for certain."
3. gnostic atheist: "I know that no gods are real."
4. agnostic atheist: "I do not believe that any gods are real, since I am aware to not know this for certain."
The phrase "x is real" in these statements means that there is a physical world in which both the observer and object x reside.
Thought experiments such as brain-in-a-jar already show (purely logical) that:
- (1.) and (3.) are both false
Since it is rational to not believe in something unknown, but irrational to believe in something unknown, further we have:
This concludes this subject as a whole and should really be common knowledge in scientific and philosophical communities.
I noticed many pseudo-disagreements in this thread which stem from issues with arguing based of different definitions. When a statement A is based on different definitions than some statement B, they cannot actually contradict each other, even though writing them out might suggest so.
But an even bigger issue is the "arguing" based on not-well-defined "statements" (which are really just nonsense). This is often called "not even wrong", because it is indeed much worse than well-defined false statements (such as "1+1=5"). Since nonsense bears no meaning which could be talked about in a meaningful way. Yet, this is what most people do most of their time because they suck at logical reasoning but excel at feeling emotions.
For example, the world's biggest religions are all based on not even wrong claims, and not even theists of the same religions can agree on how to fill the gaps and how to eliminate the contradictions in their stupid books.