On 25 February 2015 at 15:00, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 , LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> > skeptical atheism appears to be based on faith. >> > > I see, so belief in God is based on faith and so is doubts about the > existence of God, but for a word to be meaningful there must be contrast, > so your need to point out something, anything, that is NOT based on faith. > And if you can't do that then "faith" is nothing but a noise made by the > mouth. > You might have done me the courtesy of giving the entire quote, so the context was clear. But I suppose you couldn't do that because it would have meant the point you're trying to make would have been revealed as a straw man. Here is that troublesome quote in full. Or, to put it more epistemically, skeptical atheism appears to be based on > faith. *It is based on the faith that our present ideologies will be > preserved by final science.* Current physicalism may turn out to be as > delusory as Abrahamic theology. > -- Eric Steinhart, "Skeptical and Spiritual Atheisms" A genuine sceptic (and a genuine scientist) is agnostic about what the final science may turn out to be, if we ever get there. (Brent tries to be, for example, as do I). What Mr Steinhart is saying is that "skeptical atheists" as he calls them are making a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality - which is, precisely, an act of faith. -- 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/d/optout.
