NBVegita

You can use that same argument to justify spending on absolutely anything!!! Anything you want to spend money on can be twisted into helping the economy because it creates jobs. That doesn't mean that it is a good idea. Hell spending 1 billion dollars to promote building tree houses would add jobs in construction and lumber fields. Pumping 1 billion dollars into replacing every stop sign in the country with a blue one would create jobs. Building ballistic missile defense systems along the entire US boarder would create jobs. Audit twice the Americans taxes each year. Get the idea? In this example, spending $900 million will help generate jobs for a very small, very specialized outlet of work force. A majority of the money would be spent on research and vaccinations. Also, there is no guarantee that it would actually create jobs, or just how many, because most agencies currently working to prepare for pandemics are under funded as it is. Not to mention any jobs created for this increased preparation would be short term jobs, unless you plan to fund them every single year. Again there are obvious reasons why pandemic research should be funded, but it shouldn't be funded under the reuse of being an economic stimulus. The stimulus, although poorly written is supposed to help boost our economy. Say I take this statement as fact: "The health sector does ... and is one of the few places that has continued to grow throughout the recession." That alone would be a reason to invest less money into that sector. If the point of your stimulus package is to create jobs to stimulate the economy, you need to create jobs for the people who are losing their jobs. Spending money to more jobs in a field that A) is usually a specialized field, and has been hit lighter than most in the recession is a plain dumb way to spend your money. You pump $1,000,000,000 into that industry to create a small amount of jobs that normally require a higher degree of specialization, even if you say you can train those who don't have the specialization, now you're spending more of the $1,000,000,000 on training and have less money for jobs. Now you take that same sum and create jobs in the sectors hit the hardest, finance, manufacturing, ect., and you will for one, create more jobs as the fields don't pay as high as medical fields do, plus you can forgo the need to train the currently unemployed (as a whole, not everyone) because you're giving them jobs in their area of expertise. That is also more fundamental to long term growth because if you take an accountant and make him an X-Ray technician, I would bet money that 95% of the time he was a much better accountant than X-Ray technician. That again is one problem I have with the public works spending. Spend a majority of stimulus money creating public works jobs. You're going to spend a large amount of money just training those people who are hard up for work how to perform their jobs. Then once they're done, they no longer have jobs as there is no way you can maintain that sort of employment in the public works sector on our current budget. I'm no economic expert, I only have a minor in it, but some of the things in the stimulus bill are unrealistic. I truly believe the reason why this bill was passed as it is, and so fast, is so the current administration can take credit for when the economy rebounds. Not that I blame them, but spending a trillion dollars is a hell of an impulse. The only way the economy will rebound, as it has from EVERY OTHER recession is for people to gain faith in investing again. This stimulus bill doesn't give anyone faith to invest. Once enough people think the stock market has bottomed out, there will be the people who want to get in on the action. Once people start investing, the market rises. The news will start posting tentative reports that we're coming out of the recession. Thus more people will invest because they will try to get in on the "low buys" before the market rebounds. Companies will start posting profits instead of losses because people will begin to lose fear as consumers as they gain faith in the market again. Banks in turn will start lending. You will have the next Capital One, that will eat up all of the consumers who had decent credit before the recession, yet fell into hard times during, offering great interest for people with poor to mediocre credit. Consumers will then begin to spend more, buy bigger items like cars and houses. That will in turn increase market value more. The chain will continue until we have pulled ourselves out of the recession. There is nothing, not one thing, in that stimulus package that will propagate any of the above. I just think that $1,000,000,000,000 is wayyy too expensive for a bait and switch.

I have to say I agree, at least partially with Karl Rove. This should not have been in the stimulus bill. Things like that are why people are acting out against the bill. If we justified spending money to prevent all possible future disasters from happening in the United States, under a "stimulus" package, it would be endless. Not saying that pandemic prevention shouldn't be invested in, by all means it should. I just don't like the concept of it being passed off as part of a stimulus package. Just add it to the budget, which is where it belongs, not in a stimulus package.

Again I post, there is a difference between posting your opinion on how a judge would rule on a case that has never occurred, nor is there a historical case relating to polygamy, as a legal argument and needing a legally loophole free argument. All I ask is that if you're going to post an argument, you use something better than psychically predicting the outcome of a judges ruling. Again I state, which you always seem to ignore, all you have to say, even now, is that is only possible, not absolute, that polygamy would not pass a threshold test. For the dozenth (exaggeration) time, I've simply been arguing that you cannot definitely know that it would not pass. Sigh. I understand that you're annoyed because gays bother you. But what if something you believed in bothered someone, do they have the right to tell you that you cannot do it? If we were disallowed from doing things simply because they annoyed other people, no one, anywhere, would be able to do anything.

If torture doesn't work then why has just about every civilization throughout history practiced it? Not saying I condone it, but in a lot of cases, torture can be a very persuasive form of interrogation. Also I think he's simply trying to present both sides of a story, obviously as a defense. The side that "torture" was committed has come out. Now he wants the public to know that it wasn't simply torture for the sake of being cruel. Even if the CIA released reports showing every person they "tortured" released credible, lifesaving information, the American people aren't going to change how they feel over it. If you condone the use of torture, you do. If you don't, a simple memo stating they received information as a result of it won't make you change your mind. I say release the information. If you've already told half of the story, you should at least make sure to finish it. The Bush people will be more likely to crawl under a rock when they are no longer attacked. So don't plan on them going anywhere for the next few decades. It would be much better for the Republicans if they did just crawl under a rock, let them move on with their party.

I agree with you distort, I would not personally want multiple wives...one woman is more than enough to deal with...lol...I'm more arguing the principal that we should be able to if you were crazy enough to want to. What lengthy legal disclaimer do you need? Simple instead of stating that it would "X", state maybe, or possibly, or might "X" would have meant you needed no disclaimer. The aforementioned would have meant that you are stating there is a possibility that it would not pass a threshold test, which no one here would argue. The problem is, even in an online forum, if you post something that you cannot possibly know, thus the outcome of a threshold test that has never occurred and pass it off as a definite legal position, people will argue that. No one states that your argument has to be loophole-free but it you pass it off as a legal argument, it should in fact be a legal argument, not how you feel a judge would rule on a hypothetical case.

Post #7 Post #14 Post #16 Post #20 I reiterate, you cannot possibly know how a judge(s) would rule on polygamy under a threshold test.

First, again I did not "twist your words". Twisting your words means you're implying that I'm trying to portray that you stated something you didn't. I created a brand new sentence, completely separate from your own, that was mine, using similar words you used. That is not twisting your words. It is a parallel statement, nothing more. Let me spell this out for you. If you state: It is impossible for A to validate. And I say: It is impossible for B to validate. I'm not twisting/misquoting any of the above!!! I'm basically stating that if it is impossible for A to validate, then inversely it is impossible for B to validate. I don't see what is so hard to grasp. From Varnum v. Brien: Thus still fitting my argument. Again how can you not understand that if you are implicitly stating that a ruling, based on a judges opinion, without citing any case fact to back it up, would automatically guarantee a negative outcome? You have implicitly stated that if polygamy was taken to court, the judge would not validate it under a legal precedent that is highly interpretive. Again: Under that it implies that it had nothing to do with gender as to why they approved their threshold case, it was on the basis of each group being in a recognized committed relationship. Polygamy is a committed relationship. They only because discussing the gender role after their threshold test had allowed the proceedings to begin. So quoting legal documents means I speaking for the courts? When a lawyer is defending you in court and cites legal documents, he is speaking for the courts? How are you supposed to create a legal defense, or offense, without being able to site legal documents? I've never presumed to know the outcome of a judges opinion, you have. I don't think you understand. Unless you are presenting a case argument based on someone actually attempting to legalize polygamy, then you are presenting an opinion. Your opinion is not leaving room for error. You have not once stated that it "might not", "most likely would not", "probably not", ect. pass a threshold test. You are stating every time that it would not pass. As such, you are stating that if a legal argument, which is based off of opinion, is taken to a court of law, that you definitively know the answer. I am taking legal documents and presenting an argument based off of them. Not once have I claimed to know the outcome of what a court/judge would decide. Also your legal precedent, no where, even broaches the argument as to if/could multiple partners in a committed relationship differ from two partners in a committed relationship. So ultimately your case doesn't help prove your point because you are again stating definitively how one judge would interpret the ruling of another in reference to something he must create his own interpretation of. You realize that if you had simply said might instead of would most of this argument wouldn't be happening as I've never said that my argument is bullet proof and will not fail. I understand that this would wholly be up to the discretion of a judge and as such any outcome can happen. I'm simply providing an argument for polygamy, not an interpretation as to how a court would validate, or invalidate that argument. I have repeatedly stated that neither of us can know the outcome of a threshold case against polygamy, as there is none on record to date, so as such your assertion that it would not pass is your opinion as to how a judge(s) would rule on a threshold test. That is tantamount to stating that a judge will convict a person of a crime before the case has even been heard. I agree with you to a point on that Sever. I think part of the problem is that culturally polygamy is only viewed, much like Islamic culture, based on extremes, 60 year old men marrying 13 year old girls and the like. Not that I'm saying we would culturally be likely to ever legalize polygamy, just that it creates a parallel legal argument to consider. It also doesn't help that no where does polygamy have any champions like the gay community does.

lol I didn't realize sentences were private property...I'm sorry...lol. You're lacking some fundamentals.

You don't understand. Never did I quote you, or state that it was your sentence. I simply made my OWN sentence that paralleled one of yours. I simply took a sentence from your post, adjusted it to meet MY needs and subsequently posted it as my OWN sentence. In your opinion it isn't. Legally is a different story. You are stating that it doesn't match your threshold test. Your threshold test is no basis for a legal argument. I'm stating there is no legal argument. Your threshold is based off personal opinion, not legal opinion. Also: Coupled with section 1 from the 14th amendment of the constitution: Add in the supremacy clause of the constitution: Under that interpretation, the constitutions at a state and federal level do not implicitly restrict the right to polygamous marriage, thus it is an infringement of their civil rights if they are denied it. The anti-Bigamy act was passed in 1862 with no due legal process. Similar to the Defense of Marriage act, it restricted American rights with no due legal process to back it up. Prior to 1862, polygamy was not illegal. I am simply stating that if you use the argument that it violates a citizens right to depict whom they can and cannot marry, it violates their rights to depict how many people you can or cannot marry. It's a pretty simple concept. Based on the case I posted above there is no threshold argument. I'm not arguing that because monogamous marriage is legal, that polygamy should also be legal. I am stating that, using the quoted above, by making polygamy illegal you are violating the civil rights granted to American's by the United States Constitution. And actually the argument posted above could be used used for Gay marriage also.

First: Your statement: My statement: I didn't quote your sentence at all. I took your sentence and created my own sentence. Thus my statement was neither out of context nor misleading because it was not your sentence, it was mine. I simply analyzed your argument and posted the same argument you made for my side of the argument. Second: I simply stated that there is no constitutionally sufficient justification to ban it, which your sentence would agree with. Now assuming that it is all completed at the state level, there is no legal justification, just as there was none for banning gay marriage to ban polygamy. There is a moral justification that people believe it is wrong to take multiple partners. Marriage has been defined as a civil union between a man and a woman. (singular) Using the doctrine of equal protection: The same argument made for gay marriage can be in fact made for polygamy. The supreme court interprets the doctrine to state that it is unconstitutional for marriage to be defined as a man and a woman, you can also discern that it is unconstitutional for marriage to be defined as one man and one woman. The base of the argument is that you cannot limit marriage as a union of just a man and woman because it infringes on the rights of those civilians whom choose to marry someone of the same gender. The exact argument can be made that you cannot limit marriage as a union of a singular person, to another singular person because that infringes on the rights of those civilians whom choose to marry multiple partners. Your argument that being heterosexuals are allowed marriage and thus it's unjust to deny homosexuals the right of marriage again can be elaborated to if you allow monogamous marriage it is unjust to deny polygamous marriage. That is completely based on your opinion. Someone could pose the same argument for homosexual couples because they cannot bear children. That alone is not a "superficial difference" between heterosexual couples. The fact that you consider homosexuality a superficial difference and polygamy non-superficial really has no legal standing. Both, would be and are, up to the interpretation of the supreme court at that time. Which is why gay marriage has been illegal for so long, because it has been morally unacceptable. There is no better legal argument to ban gay marriage than there is to ban polygamous marriages. Please cite. Completely agreed.

There are a couple of ways to resolve that. First would to have, as most polygamous sects do, a primary wife. She would receive the same rights to her husband as would any monogamous wife would. Then each subsequent wife would be more, in a legal sense, like a related dependent. The husband can claim them as his dependent, they are legally related to him for all legal purposes (Insurance, benefits, medical situations ect.). Yet none of them, unless stated in a will would have a right to inheritance/property/pension ect. Second solution would be just simply divide everything by the number of spouses. If a woman passes away and leaves 4 husbands, each of them get a quarter share of the house/pension/inheritance ect. In cases of divorce, you would only be able to sue for half of your percentage. In the example above, if an estate is worth $1,000,000 dollars. You share that with 5 people, the woman and her 4 husbands. Thus your share of the estate is effectively $200,000, but as a dependent you are only entitled to, up to, half of it. Assuming no prenuptial agreement. In the case of children, that is between yourself and your husband/wife, and none of the others. It wouldn't be very difficult to legislate.

I wasn't cherry picking anything. What is your so called "threshold test"? I ask you to provide me something, in fact anything in the constitution that provides justification for a person to not be allowed to take multiple spouses.

First, The only reason why I cited Cato was because they had compiled a list of economist opposed to the current stimulus. Check out each economist, you'll find that Cato did not misrepresent them. Lol exile having some of the worlds best reporting? Not saying that their reporting has all been crazy tabloid, but their extremely objective and sensationalized reporting doesn't lend them credibility, even when they are right. As I pointed out in my previous post, one of their big quantifiers why it isn't a real protest is because there are no pretty girls there? Give me a break. Cite that please? I've seen dozens of video's of these and attended one as a spectator in my city, no where was there a republican agenda (in what I've seen). No one hinted at voting in Palin or a republican. In fact even at the event I was at, they refused to let local politicians of any party speak. Most of the people in the crowd wanted to vote out ALL of congress in 2010, not just the democrats. Lol of course, because they're all zombies created by the GOP machine. What I don't think you understand is that idea's can take root out of any situation. You say the Republican party is "really" behind these parties. Well all it takes is a few leaders who are actually doing this for the reasons publically stated and the idea has taken root. I guarantee you there are groups that protested that have had no contact with any republican politicians. Now I'll take a tangent. Say you're right. Say every single person, minus 1% is doing this as part of a mass republican agenda. What is wrong with what they're protesting? I outlined just a few of the flaws in this so called "stimulus" package in my last post.

There is no constitutionally sufficient justification to keep people from marrying multiple partners.

I would disagree Ace. Gay marriage was excluded as a law, or right as you depict it, when they legally stated that marriage is between two heterosexual humans of opposite sex. By not including gay marriage, they never had a civil right to marriage, just as by not including polygamists, they have never had that right. Marriage, to my knowledge, has never been defined, at any time, as the civil union of two beings, regardless of gender.

I agree with your assessment that having one partner is a moral issue issue. That's exactly why I have to agree with polygamy too. The only tangible resistance to gay marriage was based on it being "immoral", yet it is being decided daily that immoral or not, legally it is a right that the government should not infringe on. I would inversely say that if morals don't matter where gay marriage is concerning, it shouldn't matter with polygamous marriage either.

So I was talking with someone at work today and they brought up a really valid point. Right now there is all the legislation going through concerning gay marriage. Her point was that if you're going to pass legislation support/approving gay marriage, then should polygamy also be legal? I would have so say yes. If the argument is that the government can't tell you whom your spouse is, why should they have the right to tell you how many spouses you can have? What do you think?

Lol? You do realize that printing money that we can't back with a global currency does nothing be devalue the dollar. Just a little example: If our dollar and the euro were worth the same. Say we currently have 10 trillion printed dollars. We print 10 trillion more, our dollar will become worth approximately half of what it is currently. Not just those dollars, but all of the dollars currently in circulation will devalue. Which means when investing/purchasing internationally we have to spend twice as much. Now who has these dollars? Well its not the people, they don't have them. Even if you did print 10 trillion dollars, it might as well be funny money because it's worth nothing. Part of this problem stems from the fact that Bush naively tried that same exact thing. I believe he printed...400 billion dollars (approx) worth of currency to offset the deficit...yeah you see how well that worked! Note how right after he did that the pound was worth just over twice the US dollar? Funny coincidence?

Ignore economist's advice? Oh you mean we should only listen to economists who agree with the current president? A) People aren't protesting the fact that there is spending or taxes, they're protesting the amount of spending and the things it's being spent on. For every economist who agrees that trillions of dollars should be dumped into the economy, there is one who views the opposite. A quote from Robert Barro, whom if you know anything about economics I really don't have to elaborate as to who he is. "This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much." Also, he is not a republican conservative, he is a classical liberal, which doesn't represent either party. A good link: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/28/...t-the-stimulus/ C) People control the economy. The only way the economy will right itself is when people regain the confidence of investing. The stimulus package has no chance of doing that. Hmm a $400 dollar tax credit, that’s gonna make me run to the stock market, specially being its being given to me in $15-$20 increments over a long period of time. How the hell does that stimulate anything? Oh yeah, if I earn money because I rent out a house or of my investments earn money, well I have to pay the credit back. Hmmm created jobs in specialized fields that are in complete contrast with the fields whom have layed off the most people in the recession...yeah that'll get people employed. Instead of stopping the outrageous Bush era spending, lets quadruple it. Congressional auditors state that the budget will be 9.7 trillion over 8 years, assuming he get's re-elected, and the congressional budget office says it could be as high as 11.6 trillion. The same people who crucified Bush's deficit don't seem to mind Obama's? Wasn't he supposed to lower the deficit? With his proposed spending the only way you would be able to even pay for what he proposes would be to levy a horrendous tax against all Americans. He claims he won't raise taxes on the middle class? Well when he raises the tax that your company has to pay to 50% to make up for his spending, you will lose your job, or the company will just move to another country, where you will again lose your job. Over tax the rich? Well they'll do the same thing, they'll pull their investments out of our economy, which would destroy it, and move to other countries and focus on their economies. Bush put us in a hell of a hole with his deficit that Obama touted he would diminish. That is one of the reasons why I voted for Obama. Yet now that he's in office, even if his deficit numbers equal half of what is projected, instead of cutting our 2.x trillion dollar deficit, he'll raise it by 4.x trillion. There is absolutely nothing in this bill that will increase confidence in investing nor is there anything in this bill that will increase confidence in credit lending. Until those two factors are met, we will continue to be in a recession. Also how are we supposed to pay down a, generously 6-7 trillion dollar deficit? Leave it to Fin to quote a tabloid news source from Russia, well exiled from Russia. Now this seems like nice, sound, objective reporting to me: Spoiler! --Click here to view--Katz, who looked more like a failed porn actor, a dweeby version of Ron Jeremy, than a political organizer, was saying something about the need to move past partisanship. Resistance wasn’t about being Republican, Democrat or Green — it was about being American. That got cheers from the crowd, but looking around me, these people were clearly going to have trouble hiding their obvious Republicanism. A few people were holding anti-Obama signs. One guy, who called himself a comedian, held up a slickly designed sign that read: “Don’t Tax Me, Bro!” A sickly young couple, who identified their political affiliation as “freeper,” held thin cardboard signs with anti-tax slogans quickly scrawled with markers. There were a bunch of Republican hags. Some were senile and could barely walk; a few of the more sprightly ones had donned 18th century dresses they’d saved from their first proms. A dozen or so clean-cut Young Republican types were dispersed through the crowd. None of them would admit it, but they were obvious organizers of the whole sham gathering. Two other observations could be made about the crowd: 1) it was too white and 2) there were no chicks. In America, chicks are protest canaries. You can tell just how authentic a political rally is by the number of attractive women that attend. If you’re gonna build a mass movement against anything, there’s no way of getting around the chick factor. The only cute girl, a perky, tall blond, appeared later. (Looking at her picture now, she does not seem cute at all. But that just goes to show how bad the situation really was. This teabagging wasn’t for pleasure.) But she was on the job, working for some conservative TV station called Freedom Talk or Freedom Now. Judging by the name, it was connected to FreedomWorks, and she was obviously connected to Katz, chatting him up like they were friends at the end of the show. And then he just ignored the question, shifting his attention to a dweeby Republican who came up to introduce himself. Am I saying that all of the roots of the TEA parties are pure? No. But the people around the country who are attending these events are protesting for what they believe in. If the democratic party had done the same during the Bush administration you would have heralded their efforts. With that aside, I stated implicitly that a lot of groups I have read about are protesting BOTH parties. In fact republican politicians were turned away at a lot of rallies and/or not allowed to speak. Even if this did start as a "Republican" agenda, it has evolved beyond that, of course that is another matter of debate as each group in each city will have a slightly different agenda.

So I'm sure by now you've all heard of the TEA Parties going on across the country and I'm wondering what your thoughts on them are. I personally support not only that they're protesting, but also that they're finally protesting governmental taxation and spending. A lot of groups I've read about, including the one held in my own town was protesting not just Obama and the democrats but the republicans too. I don't know how effective in the grand scheme this will really be, but I personally don't think that, at this point, a revolution would be such a bad idea.

Simply because you don't lag doesn't mean that others don't. Also it's great to speak from a high and mighty chair stating that with your 100/20 and 15ms connection that anyone worse should be forced into spec, but you have ridiculous overkill for the majority of internet related things unless you have a dedicated server you can connect to. As such, the majority of people refuse to waste their money on a connection that they will never get a noticeable benefit from. Moving forward, the majority of players will average WELL above your latency. If someone has a 90ms and you have 15ms, there will be an occasion, if you play the game a lot, that you will "shoot him" and he won't die. Welcome to the internet. You're complaining that TW is losing players because of lag, but if they lost every player who had higher than your 15ms lag, there would be 3 guys playing the zone. Without them losing all of those players, you will encounter lag at some point in time. Again, welcome to the internet. Welcome to subspace. This has ALWAYS been this way. In fact it is much better since we've lost the whole dial-up crowd. As for the teaming aspect...now I've been out of playing continuum for a few years...but last I remembered...it was a team game...I know it's a novel concept...interacting with other people to accomplish a goal...but I'm pretty sure that's how the game is played...

I ask you what is the difference from appearing to be religious and being religious? As Tigron mentioned in the great faith debate, there are so few people, of just about any religion, who truly follow their religion the way it is meant to be followed. Thus in effect they appear to be religious but in effect are not. I would say the people whom you talk about, the ones wholly and completely committed to their religion are the vast minority. I disagree. Religion is a support structure. People, or at least they appear to, lend you their encouragement, faith and compassion. In return you gain strength and confidence where it did not exist before. How religious you want to be involved, concerning God, is up to you. Religion's only negative effect is with the extremists, which are rare. For example, the current day Islamic religion has been torn to shreds by the minority of religious fanatics, who just so happen to be the ones who make the news. Infusing religion into someone's life is no worse than giving them a placebo and sending them on their way. If they believe the placebo helped them, then it did. First, I never stated that religion was a way to hide from their problems. I said that religion can give a person who might otherwise lack the strength to attack a problem, the strength needed. For the last few sentences I posted, death is not a "problem" you can "attack". If you lose a loved one and believing that they are in heaven sitting with god alleviates your grief, how is that hiding from anything, or a bad thing? Also my statement that if something bad happens to you, I am referring to things you cannot control. For example, you get into a car accident. A religious person might look at it as "God works in mysterious ways" to move past the negative and think of the positives (Well at least I'm alive; I needed a new car anyway; ect.). I'm not saying that people can't handle their problems without religion, but it CAN help SOME people through their problems. How many children have a blanket/stuffed animal/doll that they carry around or grab when they're sad or scared? Would they survive without it? Sure. But does that inanimate object comfort them during a situation of stress? It sure does. I guess one analogy I could use is that religion is a safety blanket for adults to carry around.

But the big problem is that simply because you define faith as 100% doesn't mean that is the definition of faith. I've never found a definition of faith stating it is 100% certainty, or any other paraphrased manner of such. Again you're presenting faith as only absolute certainty for the religious, which is not what faith is.

Well if we're going to start doing some philosophical dissecting, I might as well join in. First Sever, I would say that this statement in itself is an oxymoron. Both faith and belief are synonymous with confidence in something. In order to hold a belief, philosophically you have to have faith in that belief. Not saying you need to have blind faith in said item. If you believe that your observations are correct, or more so true, or as true as a belief can be, then you also have at least enough faith in your beliefs to feel that they are more so correct than false. Your last sentence is just reiterating all of man's philosophical position concerning truth. Everything we "know" as true could ultimately be false and vice versa. Philosophically I would state that you cannot possibly have a belief without having faith in it being, or at least slightly leaning towards it being correct. Even if these beliefs are obtained through observation and logic, you have faith that your observation and logic will bring you to the proper belief, or conclusion. I think the problem philosophically is that every associates faith with either religion, or putting your trust in something that cannot be reasonably determined. I also stand to say that philosophically it is impossible to have a belief without personally having faith/opinion/feeling that it is more likely true than false. Even if you state that your belief by observation and logic, is likely to be false, if you believe in it, you believe it to be more true than false.

I would say that it is your belief Lynx, that God does not exist. Being neither side can prove that God either exists or does not, it is a belief one way or another. You fall under the concept of religion because of your belief concerning an all powerful being(s), which then influences your belief on the afterlife, the creation of the universe and all sorts of other topics. I would say that Agnosticism would be a more philosophical view point concerning religion, but I would still vaguely categorize it as its own religion.