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I've been agnostic, rather than atheist, for most of my life. My argument was that life is too complex, especially with how organs work, for there not to be someone planning it. I guess the best word for my beliefs would be deist, but I only learned the term recently.
Anyway, I just read an essay by Yudkowsky and I'm now convinced there is almost certainly no God. This depresses me because I want there to be a God.. which is to say, an unmoved mover at the beginning of time that is sentient. The idea that something at the beginning of time was unaffected by the rules of cause and effect is still plausible to me, but is there any reason left to assume it was sapient? I'd appreciate help with this, because I want to convince myself there may be a God.
Convincing yourself that God exists - or convincing yourself that you have convinced yourself - won't make there be a God. There just is one or there isn't. All you'd be doing is lying to yourself.
Wanting to believe things is a type error. Beliefs aren't about what you want, they're about what you think is true.
I think the correct word is hope. You can hope something is true but its desirability shouldn't affect your actual beliefs one way or the other.
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