On 6/29/2014 10:47 PM, LizR wrote:
On 30 June 2014 17:41, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 6/29/2014 10:20 PM, LizR wrote:
On 30 June 2014 17:02, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 6/29/2014 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 30 June 2014 04:43, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:44 PM, LizR <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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?
No just the ones I've come across, like Richard Dawkins.
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.
Hmm, well that's all-inclusive. I guess if whatever happens, you will call it natural -
Biblical god appears, that's natural....OK, you've got me there.
Exactly. When people talk about god being supernatural, they don't just mean "beyond our
current conception of the natural". They mean "in accordance with our myths and having
special significance for human values." When pulsar signals were first observed they were
outside our current conception of the natural. But nobody called them "supernatural".
They were just no understood. Yet when some water condenses under the eye of a statue of
the virgin Mary nobody says, "An interesting natural phenomenon." They say "Miracle".
So the question then is, do you believe (in the positive sense) in the supernatural? Or
do you fail to believe in the supernatural? Given a new phenomenon, what would it have to
be like for you to say it was definitely supernatural? And do you think there are such
phenomenon?
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,...
No I was just talking about atheists.
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.
I didn't say that. You can see what I said above.
You think you said you're not an atheist because you can't be 100% certain that there was
no creator of the universe, because there might be a natural creator who is so much more
advanced than us that it seems supernatural.
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.
Well that's OK then, in that case I agree with him (except for him calling himself an
atheist).
It's a simple construction "a-theist" = "not a theist" and "theist" = "one who believes
in the existence of personal god who created the universe, answers prayers, and judges
human acts and thoughts".
Brent
"All thinking men are atheists."
--- Ernest Hemingway
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