If it can't be tested, science can't do much about it.
Atheism is a belief.
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If it can't be tested, science can't do much about it.
What do you mean by "validity"?
The scientitfic method validates itself as a means to help gain understanding by the very fact that it helps gain understanding.
Whether or not it is the best method available... for that you'd have to come up with alternatives and demonstrate, via the scientific method, that they are superior.
Currently none have been demonstrated to be... which is why the scientific method remains... (which is itself part of the scientific method).
The scientitfic method validates itself as a means to help gain understanding by the very fact that it helps gain understanding.
Whether or not it is the best method available... for that you'd have to come up with alternatives and demonstrate, via the scientific method, that they are superior.
Currently none have been demonstrated to be... which is why the scientific method remains... (which is itself part of the scientific method).
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
And thus Science cannot include statements or certainties about the liklihood of various phenomena unless prior research has directly tested, observed, measured such phenomena or phenomena or things that would have to be necessary - all very clear by deduction - for these phenomena to exist. I think a lot of scientists and non-scientists forget this.
They see such speculation as scientific, rather than the intuitions or guess of those who are involved in science.
Simon Anders And thus Science cannot include statements or certainties about the liklihood of various phenomena...
And yet it is not unreasonable to dismiss wholly absurd claims of special exception to well establish data when it is wholly unsupported by anything other than the rantings of bronze age sheep herders.
And yet it is not unreasonable to dismiss wholly absurd claims of special exception to well establish data when it is wholly unsupported by anything other than the rantings of bronze age sheep herders.
Like what?
mynameisDan
Registered Senior Member
"Atheism may be a belief, but it is grounded firmly on logic."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Atheism is unprovable assumption that God or gods do not exist. There is no logic in support of such a notion. In fact, atheism is the opposite of logical. Atheism presumes a material universe, yet logic is based upon immaterial, universal laws. Why do such laws even exist if there is no God. The atheist has no idea, but the theist does. To argue that no God exists is like arguing that air doesn't exist, a suffocating endeavor. To do so requires logic and logic is unexplainable in the atheist world view, it is thus self refuting.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Atheism is unprovable assumption that God or gods do not exist. There is no logic in support of such a notion. In fact, atheism is the opposite of logical. Atheism presumes a material universe, yet logic is based upon immaterial, universal laws. Why do such laws even exist if there is no God. The atheist has no idea, but the theist does. To argue that no God exists is like arguing that air doesn't exist, a suffocating endeavor. To do so requires logic and logic is unexplainable in the atheist world view, it is thus self refuting.
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Here they go again.
If theism is logical, which one would assume based on your 'logic' then why are there so many different religions with different gods with different messages, many of those messages contradict the other religions? How is that logical?
That is dead wrong, the universal laws or laws of physics are not immaterial, they can be detected and measured, hence they are part of the material universe.
Why would such laws even need to exist if there was a god?
The theist superiority complex?
The "air" can be detected and measured. How do we detect and measure your god?
Yes but also frustrating.
One doesn't need a dictionary to see that one is either for God or against him. In other words he either believes God or he doesn't. If he doesn't know God then of course he can't believe God. so no one in the world is neutral as Jesus tells us.
Carico one is either for God or against him.
The lie of an evil god. aka the false dilemma
Good people do not treat others as either "for or against" them. A good person welcomes you as you are and lets you be if that is what you wish.
but an evil person needs enemies and the way to manufacture them is to declare that you are either for or against them.
It is perhaps one of the surest ways of ferreting out evil.
The lie of an evil god. aka the false dilemma
Good people do not treat others as either "for or against" them. A good person welcomes you as you are and lets you be if that is what you wish.
but an evil person needs enemies and the way to manufacture them is to declare that you are either for or against them.
It is perhaps one of the surest ways of ferreting out evil.
One doesn't need a dictionary to see that one is either for God or against him. In other words he either believes God or he doesn't. If he doesn't know God then of course he can't believe God. so no one in the world is neutral as Jesus tells us.
It doesnt have to be a for or against issue. It's also valid to say "There may or may not be [a god], which is essentially an agnostic stance.
Isnt the real problem with this discussion the fact that we havent decided what we're talking about when we refer to "god"? Are we talking about the idea of some fundamental resource from which all things manifest? I suspect that is what the word god is intended to indicate in Christianity. Or are we talking about god(s) like the deities made reference to in Greek mythology?
These are two very different concepts. I think somehow I'm ok spending some time discussing whether or not, or if so what and how, there is some "thing/non-thing" , a "That. from which all things manifests" can or cant be.
On the other hand, I'm not really interested in discussing whether there are deities or not. There is no evidence for such a thing other than literary references. Ive never even read anything from modern times where someone has claimed to experience a god first hand.
The idea that a deity is the source of all creation, or That from which all things manifest, is obviously false. I mean whatever everything comes from couldnt be a "thing", like a deity is a thing,because something/non-thing (if we believe there is an ultimate resource for everything that is) would have had to create it.
In other words, even if a god/deity, like Greek mythology describes does exist and IS responsible for our existence and the existence of our shared milieu it could only be a demiurge at most.
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
Of course it is unreasonable to say without evidence that they are wrong. I can, of course, understand why scientists are not convinced or consider the experiences and beliefs of other people as evidence. But that was not my point. My point was that to say that the claims are wrong, without evidence, is hypocrisy. (I assume I always need to point out that I am not confusing this with a proof of God's existence. I am simply pointing out that speculation like that is unscientific.)
The portions I bolded in what you said above are unnecessary and/or incorrect. You judgments of sheep herders - who certainly were poor particle physicists, if that were the issue - is both unpleasantly reminiscent of the kinds 'thinking' colonialists had - they have nothing to offer us - and irrelevent.
Yes atheism is a belief.
I state that because I can not prove there is no god. In such I would be making a leap of faith to say as fact that there is no god.
If you were to ask me the chance of a god, whatever my answer was, you could not prove me wrong and I couldn't prove I was right.
If that is all that is being asked. Then yes it is a belief. But it is not a religion.
JA
I state that because I can not prove there is no god. In such I would be making a leap of faith to say as fact that there is no god.
If you were to ask me the chance of a god, whatever my answer was, you could not prove me wrong and I couldn't prove I was right.
If that is all that is being asked. Then yes it is a belief. But it is not a religion.
JA
You simply do no understand what atheism is, it seems.
It's simply not believing in god(s).
We don't try to prove anything, we just don't believe in the gods we have been told about. It's not a pro position, it's a lack of something.
Atheism is NOT a belief, it's a lack of belief. Please understand the terms. Oh, and I am an atheist, don't dare to tell me what I think.