Pascal's wager... yawn. Personally, I don't know how anyone can choose a belief. And, BTW, spell check - look into it.
As I said, you seem to be perpetuating the myth that the only basis for theism or atheism is evidence of divinity. This is simply untrue. :shrug:
Then you seem to be confirming my statement : As I said, Any argument that relies on an absence of evidence is weak at best, political at worst.. - since you are obviously finding it convenient to disregard what I am actually saying and instead assert some political agenda derived from what you imagine. :shrug:
If someone were to assert that there is an elephant on the quad, then the failure to observe an elephant there would be good reason to think that there is no elephant there. But if someone were to assert that there is a flea on the quad, then one's failure to observe it there would not constitute good evidence that there is no flea on the quad. The salient difference between these two cases is that in the one, but not the other, we should expect to see some evidence of the entity if in fact it existed. Moreover, the justification conferred in such cases will be proportional to the ratio between the amount of evidence that we do have and the amount that we should expect to have if the entity existed. If the ratio is small, then little justification is conferred on the belief that the entity does not exist. [For example] in the absence of evidence rendering the existence of some entity probable, we are justified in believing that it does not exist, provided that (1) it is not something that might leave no traces and (2) we have comprehensively surveyed the area where the evidence would be found if the entity existed...[5] —J.P. Moreland and W.L. Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview At the beginning of the twenty first century the situation remains very similar: for every atheistic scientist who supposes that science supports (or does not undermine) their atheism, there is a religiously inclined scientist who supposes that science supports (or does not undermine) their theism. Thus the atheist simplifies the very complicated and much contended question of the relationship between science and atheism/religion if they suppose that the evidence provided by the scientific study of the natural and social world unequivocally points to atheism. This is evident in each of the main branches of science, both natural and social, which have some relevance to the issue of the truth or falsity of atheism/religion. .... or as I said earlier, any argument that relies on an absence of evidence is weak at best, political at worst. IOW your combination of dumbing down the definition of the god and/or relying on a means of asserting evidence that cannot even theoretically hope to approach the question and/or using linguistics to avoid stating a world view that has obvious ramifications for a positive assertion is all clear evidence that you have a weak evidence at best or a political one at worst.
Will the irony never end? What I'm saying is that atheism is not predicated on the absence of physical evidence of God. Your assertion that it is is fallacious. But I guess you're going to pretend I'm saying something else, because it's more convenient to do that while simply restating your fallacious claim over and over and over than to address the actual point. It's never fooled anyone before, why do you expect it will now? :shrug:
I'm afraid Balerion is right. Atheism is predicated on the absence of a metaphysical God. The origin of atheism is against all intangible supernatural aspects of God not to be found in nature. It is a predisposition against religious fanatics who believe in silly things. This doesn't negate an atheist's ability to observe the word in the dictionary and relate it to nature against supernatural occurrence.
I should have known this would fly right over your head. Why is it that your own words have to be repeated back to you so often? Which was followed by you restating your assertion, then pretending you never said it in the first place. Why are you here if you can't keep track of your own arguments? :shrug:
So if you highlight the phrase "the only basis for theism or atheism is divinity", who apparently offers it to the discussion? :shrug:
Its only when one equates "an absence of a metaphysical anything" with endeavors in science that one lands squarely in a circular argument (unless there are ideas forthcoming about how science approaches metaphysical subjects)
I'm speaking about supernatural metaphysics which many such as yourself use in order to provide evidence of a supernatural being. Not the true classic Aristotle view... For example Buddhists have atheist views ( and origins in atheism ) because they don't believe in a supernatural existence. ( today we believe they did because we don't understand reincarnation/Brahman is akin to today's equivalence principal ) or the impossibility of loosing information retained by the soul to an immaterial state of existence.
No I didn't. I said that if one insists on suggesting it is, one is offering a weak argument at best or being political at worst. The basis of a metaphysical claim (regardless whether it is "we exist in an a/theistic universe") certainly cannot be a discipline that has no recourse to metaphysics.
Now you're lying. You explicitly said that atheism itself is defined by such an argument. :shrug: Metaphysics are not required to say that all concepts of God as we know it are man-made, which is the essential premise of atheism. It's interesting. Earlier, you painted atheism as an argument from lack of evidence, yet now you're saying it's a claim of absolute knowledge. Is this shift intentional, or do you just go whichever way the wind blows? :shrug:
The photo does not contain an argument about the elephant in your bathtub. The guy is not you. And you cannot offer one without recourse to absence of evidence.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! no I didn't ... unless you think atheism has no other recourse outside of weak or political arguments Unless you can back that statement up with some sort of "hard evidence" (remember you just used the word "all") it most definitely is a metaphysical stance I think you need to actually accept what people say as opposed to taking the liberty of imagining what they say for the sake of having a strawman to burn or introducing red herrings :shrug:
perhaps that would make sense if elephants (or bath tubs for that matter) could not be evidenced (or if for some equally strange reason, you have legitimate reasons for thinking only the gentleman in the photograph is capable of evidencing elephants) :shrug:
Since atheism was alive and well long before Richard Dawkins was even born, that doesn't make sense. Perhaps you mean logic. That's not an atheist claim. It was the result of some study given in the OP. Atheists praise the agnostics for their candid admission that they do not know the unknowable, while disparaging religious people for their pretense (pretending to know the unknowable) and for the matrix of fallacy which religious people use to prop up that pretense. Since religion, not atheism, and certainly not science, ascribe the creation of the universe to a male (although not exactly a person, one of countless fallacies upon which religions are generally based) this makes no sense. The average energy from the sun is constant, yet the earth is heating. The chemical composition of the atmosphere determines how much heat is trapped and how much is reflected. The gases which are known to trap heat in the atmosphere include CO[sub]2[/sub]. Humans emit copious quanties of CO[sub]2[/sub] and the chemical surveys of the atmosphere show a rising amount of CO[sub]2[/sub]. Combine the above facts using valid logic, and you arrive closer to an understanding of the most basic concepts of climate science. This statement has no bearing on the question of why atheists score better on IQ tests than religious people do, nor is it relevant to the claim that religious people make, that they know what is unknowable. This statement forms a conclusion in the negative from a proposition that forms no logical basis. This statement is hard to parse. The "you" in the last sentence apparently refers to Christians, the "worship Christmas Day " appears to mean "worship Jesus" in the scenario of the Nativity. It's pretty clear what Christmas Day is, there's no effort really involved in that, whereas the work required to become an expert in cosmology takes years - decades - in comparison. Again, there is no factual basis for making broad disavowals of atheism based on what "ants do not know", or what common Westerners know about Christmas. The absence of facts and the absence of valid logic used in religion stands in remarkable contrast the logic of Richard Dawkins, who is a subject of perennial attacks by religious groups merely because he and others have worked hard to raise public awareness about religious pseudoscience - which is almost entirely relegated to the most strident fundamentalists, almost entirely centered on attacks against Big Bang Theory, the teaching of evolutionary biology, and the current evidence and analysis of the climate by the leading climate science experts. Dawkins' arguments against these forms of pseudoscience can best be described as an analysis of the matrix of fallacies upon which religious pretense (pretending to know the unknowable) is propped up. Thanks to Dawkins, these pseudoscience claims are losing credibility and their chief instigators are now better known as scam artists.
