"The problem with atheism isn’t lack of belief, but wrong belief. In other words, it is always possible to formulate a conception of God that stands up to critical examination"
All concepts of god will eventually be disproven, most already can be.
Ever hear of "evolution"?
I don't know. Quantum Physics are proving the existences of other "planes" or "realities." To me, all a god is is just a being that exists on these "planes." Perhaps "god" is too strong a word, then, and it becomes more appropriate to use the term "spirit," "alien," "being,"... I hate American English.
I don't think you can disprove something for which there exists no solid proof on our plane of existence. You need evidence of nonexistence before you can disprove something, and there's no solid evidence either way that can currently be scientifically studied, unless you can provide me with some. But understand, just because something cannot be scientifically studied with our current knowledge and technology, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm sure you've heard that a million times, already, and now I say it.
Some good points, Riverwolf. This is what I meant by science today being "open-ended."
In a sense, though I don't think that a forced choice meets the dictionary definition of "choice" at all. But how do you think that atheism implies that a person cannot "get" this?
"Choice" was really the wrong word. I should have used "decision." My bad. Even so, many atheists in the RF certainly do not "get" it even though atheism itself can.
So, because some decisions are forced, people cannot be convinced by evidence?
I have no idea where you get this. It wasn't even implied.
I think this statement doesn't work as a generality. Choice of what, exactly? If I'm in the cafeteria line ahead of you, my choice to take the last lime Jell-o certainly invalidates your choice to do the same.
We're not talking about
things.
I think that some things are objectively true; and while it may not be one person's choice that invalidates another's, one choice can be right while another is wrong.
Things objectively true (like 2 + 2 = 4) are facts; thruths are lived as values and spiritual ideals.
Sure, when you look at life as a whole, but the debate over theism vs. atheism necessarily only deals with a small segment of reality... the part that deals with what we believe.
No. It's not about
what we believe, but the direction our beliefs take us. For example: What kind of education serves a higher ideal and higher purpose--the kind that prepares us to make a living, or the kind designed to effect the better coordination of our relatively isolated self with the larger realities of the cosmos?
I question whether the word "truth" is the right one to use here, but if you mean that knowledge is only useful in service of some larger purpose, well, okay.
Well, yeah, knowledge supplemented by another kind of knowledge: the kind of knowledge that comes only with personal experience. It's a language problem. Either a distinction is made between "facts," which are fixed, and "truth," or we come up with another word for the flexible and relativities of "truth."
I disagree. I think it may always be possible to come up with some thing that is unfalsifiable, but whether that thing can fit within a reasonable definition of the word "god" is another question.
Here's a suggestion, and only a suggestion, to illustrate my point. Let's assume consciousness is real. Let us also assume that Einstein's "spooky action at a distance," "non-locality," or "quantum entanglement" is a fact of nature (not much of an assumption since there have been literally thousands of experiments that suggest just that). Put the two together and you get
one consciousness composed of many qualitative variations and localized regions. It's unfalsifiable and fits within a reasonable definition of God. It might not be a Big Daddy in the Sky kind of God, but it would be the kind of God that's been around for a few hundred (or few thousand) years.
Also, at some point I think it's worthwhile to question whether the conception of God in question comes out of actual belief and not an attempt at logical evasiveness.
For some people it certainly is (TV preachers disgust me), but not everyone. Others, either by some kind of experience or inheritence, are driven to attach a concept of some kind to something they can sense but not touch or see.
I disagree. Absence of evidence does constitute evidence of absence. It does not constitute proof of absence, but in the circumstantial sense, it certainly is evidence.
In the same way that every roll of a die will increase the confidence that a smaller and smaller interval contains the expected value of a single toss, repeated failed tests for evidence increase the confidence with which we can say that the thing being tested for likely does not exist.
I do recognize that confidence can never reach 100%, though, so perhaps a better way of putting it is "absence of evidence is evidence of statistical insignificance"... which is true in all cases, while the original expression is only true in most.
This doesn't work when you're dealing with infinity.
Any extremely large, complex and highly-automatic appearing system will always conceal the presence behind it from any mind very far below the level of its origination...and let's be honest, we're about as far below that as we can get. In fact, I'm inclined to say any evidence apart from the internal experiencing of God is
not evidence.
Pascal's Wager is a sucker bet, and relies on exactly the same logic as the "British Lottery" scam.
Also, I see a contradiction in the process you're implying here and your point number 1.
Pascal's wager isn't about winning or losing, nor is it meant to convince anyone to believe, but rather it illustrates the reasonableness of believing something without sufficient evidence. I can just as easily illustrate why it can be unreasonable in certain circumstance
not to make a belief-decision in the absence of sufficient evidence.
Or you, plus whatever forces beyond our control you refer to in 1 or 2 you're asserting that are acting on us.
True.
And there is a qualitative difference between saying "I do not believe in God" and "Life has no ultimate meaning."
Some atheists may be nihilists, but atheism does not require nihilism.
Of course. But why not take it to its logical conclusion?
Do you think that being an atheist necessarily means that a person does not have the "tools" to differentiate between those statements?
No, not
necessarily. But they almost invariably ask, "What's the difference? Both statements are statements of beliefs." Well, duh. That's not the point.
What are you referring to by "the task", and do you think that developing the tools adequate to it requires theism?
Wow! Great question! The task is to attain a personal understanding of reality as it is. It's a truth-quest, not the acquirement of facts. And if you ever listened to Joseph Campbell, you understand what I mean when I say that something doesn't have to be factual in order to be true. In order to do that, we have to step outside the box of consensual knowledge and start exploring things on our own. This means you can no longer allow yourself to be impressed with the sophistries of others and
unlearning a lot of stuff. Either that or be so disgruntled with the world you don't give a damn what other people think about your interpretative concepts.
