On 6/29/2014 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 30 June 2014 04:43, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com <mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>>
wrote:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:44 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com
<mailto:lizj...@gmail.com>>
wrote:
> agnosticism is of course the defining principle of the scientific
method, so
we really need the concept in order to understand the status of
scientific theories.
I like what Isaac Asimov, a fellow who knew a thing or two about science,
had to say
on this subject:
"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been
an
atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually
unrespectable
to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't
have.
Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally
decided
that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an
atheist. I
don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly
suspect
he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."
So he knows that he only has enough evidence to be agnostic, but he is emotionally
convinced to be an atheist nonetheless. OK, so that puts him on a par with religious
believers who are also emotionally convinced, though not of the same thing.
No more so that being an aSanta-Clausist. Actually I think there is enough evidence to
prove (in the 'beyond reasonable doubt' sense) that the God of the bible does not exist.
But you don't have to prove something doesn't exist to reasonably fail to believe that it
does. I don't have proof that there is no teapot orbiting Jupiter, but that doesn't make
me epitemologically irresponsible to assert I don't believe there is one.
Brent
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