I think that entire conversation has been spoiled by the organized abrahamic religions. More often than not when we say "religious" or "believe in god" we are referring to the concepts described by these religions in overly vague and at the same time overly specific terms. Do I believe that wine turns into Jesus blood, humans lived with dinosaurs, some guy talked to god who appeared as a burning bush or anything like that? Hell no! To me those stories are en par with fairy tales and all somewhere on the spectrum between opposing things we know as a fact and things that are so incredibly unlikely that they aren't any more worth thinking about than anything I might just make up or read in a sci-fi novel. In fact I think that it's scary that there are people who actually believe that those things are true. So in almost all conversations I will identify myself as a vehement atheist.
At the same time I have no idea if there aren't incredibly powerful beings somewhere that have the power to create whole universes that many would describe as gods. I also don't exclude the possibility that the universe is sentient or maybe even mankind or the entire earth is a sentient organism of some kind. Maybe the entire universe is a giant computer or simulation run by some more advanced beings. If those things were true they probably could be compared to religions believes. However, I have trouble calling myself agnostic. I think that that theoretically would make me agnostic. However, I have a hard time calling myself that because I am so repulsed by the naive fairy tales commonly associated with religion.
At the same time I also don't think it's worth devoting much effort to thinking about these things, since they are questions that tend to make no predictions that we can proof or disproof. I find it disturbing that society approves so much of asking childish questions like "where do we come from?", "where will we go?", etc. It's obviously just a mental rabbit hole and there are no real answers to these questions and anyone who claims to have answers to these is a liar or a fool. Unfortunately the big religions claim to have these answers. To me that makes any nuanced discussion about "religion" almost impossible with most people including myself, since I first and foremost want to distance myself from fairy tales.
Let's say there is a God, or a higher being running a simulation, it would then be completely rational at that point to then think that they could do highly improbable things (it's their simulation after all). Furthermore, with the story of Jesus turning water into wine as an example: Jesus claimed to be God, so its completely rational for us to believe that he could do something so trivial. If he couldn't do something like that, well then it would be obvious he was just a man.
At the same time I have no idea if there aren't incredibly powerful beings somewhere that have the power to create whole universes that many would describe as gods. I also don't exclude the possibility that the universe is sentient or maybe even mankind or the entire earth is a sentient organism of some kind. Maybe the entire universe is a giant computer or simulation run by some more advanced beings. If those things were true they probably could be compared to religions believes. However, I have trouble calling myself agnostic. I think that that theoretically would make me agnostic. However, I have a hard time calling myself that because I am so repulsed by the naive fairy tales commonly associated with religion.
At the same time I also don't think it's worth devoting much effort to thinking about these things, since they are questions that tend to make no predictions that we can proof or disproof. I find it disturbing that society approves so much of asking childish questions like "where do we come from?", "where will we go?", etc. It's obviously just a mental rabbit hole and there are no real answers to these questions and anyone who claims to have answers to these is a liar or a fool. Unfortunately the big religions claim to have these answers. To me that makes any nuanced discussion about "religion" almost impossible with most people including myself, since I first and foremost want to distance myself from fairy tales.
Edit: Typo "there" -> "they" + clarification.