On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
> My point is that if one takes atheism to be the rejection of all > conceptions of god, then because those ideas are conceptions of god from > various religions, then someone who remains atheist after exposure to those > ideas (rather than agnostic) has rejected them, and worse, has done so > without any justification. This is anti-scientific because there is some > evidence for these propositions. Even if that evidence does not convince > you, there is no reason to reject them until evidence comes out against the > theories on which they are based. > This thread has devolved somewhat into arguing definitions, but I'll bite anyway. Anyone can posit theories or claims; it is up to those persons to present credible evidence supporting those claims. If the claims themselves are incoherent or not logically possible, no evidence can be presented. If the evidence presented in support of those claims is not actually supportive, or is not possible to evaluate, then no further action need be taken. If the evidence presented is simply that a proposition is possible, well, many things that are possible are still not true; this is not evidence. If the evidence presented is "I would like/feel happier/be less scared in a world where this is true", this is of course not evidence. If the evidence presented is "If this were true, it would be consistent with these other things that I believe are true", it is not evidence. If the evidence presented is "I can't make sense of the world unless this is true", it is not evidence. If the evidence presented is "Everyone believes this, you should too", it is not evidence. If the evidence presented is "Believe this or we will kill you", it is not evidence. In all these cases, there is no burden on anyone else to reject these assertions, as no evidence has been presented in support of them. In the realm of theistic beliefs, we were all born lacking any; we were all born atheists. Some people have come to believe various religious claims as true, and thus have become theists of different varieties. For some of us, these claims have never risen beyond any of the categories above, and hence we remain atheists, without the need to "reject" anything, having not taken any action whatsoever. We simply remain in our state of lacking any theistic beliefs. We do not need to encounter specific evidence against these sorts of claims. So if you have a specific claim to make, and actual evidence to support it, we'll listen. But we don't start out as "rejecting all conceptions of God"; we're just happily living our lives and not spending much time worrying about these matters, except perhaps recently on this mailing list. Johnathan Corgan -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
