On 30 June 2014 17:02, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 6/29/2014 7:33 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 30 June 2014 04:43, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:44 PM, LizR <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. >
Well there you go then. I rest my case. > 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. > Atheists don't just believe that the biblical god doesn't exist, they believe that there are no supernatural forces involved in the operation of the universe. While I consider this likely, I don't consider it 100% proven, because as Arthur C Clark said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and it's at least conceivable that there are sufficiently advanced beings out there that they can act outside what we call nature. For example I am not 100% sure that the universe wasn't created by some intelligent beings with sufficiently advanced technology to create big bangs (they may of course have evolved naturally in another universe). I don't think it's likely, but that's my emotional prejudices at work. I can't see that I can claim with certainty that it's impossible, and since these being would fit with some definitions of god (creator of the unvierse) then I can't say it is 100% proven that god doesn't exist. If you are going to narrowly define atheism as not believing in the god of the bible, then of course I will agree with you (I will even throw in the Norse and Egyptian gods and a few others, if you like). But that isn't what I am talking about when I say Atheism, and I doubt it's what Asimov meant either. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
