Originally Posted by kerry edwards

I think I disagree with your main point. For instance, I think a person can be a theist, but not a believer. Epicurus (the great enemy of early Christianity) was not an atheist, but he was also not a believer. He thought gods existed but would have nothing to do with us, since we would disturb the god's tranquility, so he refused to have anything to do with the gods. He's a theistic unbeliever. Similarly, I think a person today might be convinced by many of the arguments that theistic believers use to prove God's existence (holding that there is Supreme Being, or Uncaused Cause or Prime Mover) but reject all institutional religion and think that God is irrelevant to human life on the whole.