On 6/29/2014 10:20 PM, LizR wrote:
On 30 June 2014 17:02, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: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. 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.
Where is this written? Do you speak for all atheists, or just ones in NZ?
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.
That seems to really waffle. If we knew these beings could so act wouldn't we just readjust "what we call nature". In fact that's a general problem with saying what it would mean for some events to be supernatural. In the past many events were thought to be supernatural, acts of God, e.g. sickness, lightning, drought, earthquakes,...but are now thought to be natural. So it some new phenomena is observed why wouldn't we just assume it was natural even if we didn't have an explanation.
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.
Didn't you slip from "something or someone beyond our current explanation" to "god". You speak for atheists, what do you have to say for religionists? Are they just worshiping some unknown possibility. What is the god they believe in - that's the god I don't believe in. I think you have muddled the word "god" in order make it seem unreasonable to assert definitively that "god" doesn't exist. But in the process you've made "god" into something quite different from the god of religion. A mere shadow of the once powerful Yaweh, Baal, Zeus, Thor,...
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 seem to be equating atheism with asserting that nothing beyond our knowledge of nature exists. Not just failing to believe that such exists, but having 100% confidence that it doesn't. I don't know anyone who calls himself an atheist and who makes such a strong statement. Dawkins has explicity said he is not absolutely certain there is no god of any kind. Vic Stenger explicitly says he cannot rule out a deist god.
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