Atheism is a faith

[Jayhawker Soule]

Why are theists so invested in characterizing atheism as a faith or a religion. It exudes insecurity, like awkward adolescents whining:

"I know you are but what am I?"​

It truly does impress me as unseemly.

In all fairness, I can see where they're coming from. There are some atheists for whom I would say disbelief becomes a faith, which they frequently proselytize.

I completely agree, and I have little patience with such people. But there's a difference between what atheism is and what "some atheists" are.

 

[rojse]

These experts are more like corrupt clergy than honest scientists. There's a difference between putting faith in a person whose job it is to help you, and accepting the reality of a system of symbols.

For scientists and religious leaders alike.

What symbols do you mean? I must have missed this. Please elaborate.

Science, coupled with engineering, is responsible for most of our technological achievements. Scientists might research how radioactivity works, and the engineer uses this research to build a bunch of items, from chemotherapy treatments to nuclear reactors to atom bombs.

And the scientists do help you, just not in the direct: "I'll be here for two hours, and that will be seventy dollars" manner that I used for my examples. For government scientists, you pay them with your taxes. For commerce and industry, you pay them as part of the in-built price of the products you purchase. So that is the payment part covered.

For my example about radioactivity, if you come down with cancer, won't you be glad that some scientists tinkered with radioactivity and you can go through chemotherapy? I could give other examples for different areas of scientific research, but you get the idea.

 

[Popeyesays]

I think the difference is: Those who espouse Atheism, espouse a faith. Those who are truly atheists do not need to espouse it.

Regards,
Scott

 

[MoonWater]

Saying that atheism and theism are both faith based is equivilant to saying that firemen and arsonists both work with fire.

They DO both work with fire. I'm afraid I've missed your point. Do you think you could elaborate for me?

 

[Scuba Pete]

But there's a difference between what atheism is and what "some atheists" are.

The same can be said for Christianity, Judaism, politics and most any profession you could think of.

Unfortunately, we are often judged as being just like the people who make us cringe.

 

[Papersock]

Does it take the same amount of "faith" to assume that something that cannot be proven does exist as it does to assume it does not exist?

As I'm sure others have said already, it takes as much faith to not believe in god as it does to not believe in invisible fairies. And if this can be said to be faith then the word has lost all useful meaning.

My point is, it is not really an issue of faith, but of what is most likely to be true and which is the safer assumption, based on the evidence at hand.

 

[Vassal]

My point is, it is not really an issue of faith, but of what is most likely to be true and which is the safer assumption, based on the evidence at hand.

Ignoring an all-powerful deity is probably the most unsafe thing you could do.

 

[Nanda]

Ignoring an all-powerful deity is probably the most unsafe thing you could do.

Not if he doesn't exist.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

My point is, it is not really an issue of faith, but of what is most likely to be true and which is the safer assumption, based on the evidence at hand.

This makes it a question of when a small pile of sand becomes large when adding one grain at a time. The problem is that both science and religion have a lot of self-serving rhetoric. It is commonly believed by atheists that science carries more weight because it operates from what can be measured, while religion operates from unfounded assumptions. However, science is descriptive, not explanatory. They overlook the fact that naturalism, atheistic science as we know it, couldn't operate at all without unproven assumptions of its own. Most naturalists, for example, make a leap of faith by assuming that they are studying something that is real--that the physical world actually exists--but this belief has been assailed by evidence and critics within the scientific community itself.

So, what does this mean? Ideally, it means that after his long and difficult climb to the top of the mountain, the scientist finds the theologian there waiting for him. In the real world, however, "true physics, 'natural philosophy,' the search for natural truth and understanding , is ill, perhaps mortally." (David Ruelle, Chance and Chaos) And the sickness trickles into the community at large. In RF, for example, one person wrote that there is little, if any, evidence that supports things like ESP. How can it be otherwise when critics don't discuss their concerns or even read with care any of the technical literature? Or when a proposal to study the foundations and meaning of quantum theory is ridiculed as being "in the same league as the study of UFOs and ESP"? Or when maveric scientific ideas are referred to as "dangerous"?

"What is most likely to be true and which is the safer assumption, based on the evidence at hand" is a good rule of thumb. I like it. But the materialistic paradigm has nothing but the weight of its momentum to keep it going. "Old ideas take hold not because they are better," said one scientist, "but because the proponants of old ideas die off."

Good point, Papersock.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

What symbols do you mean? I must have missed this. Please elaborate.

Science, coupled with engineering, is responsible for most of our technological achievements. Scientists might research how radioactivity works, and the engineer uses this research to build a bunch of items, from chemotherapy treatments to nuclear reactors to atom bombs.

And the scientists do help you, just not in the direct: "I'll be here for two hours, and that will be seventy dollars" manner that I used for my examples. For government scientists, you pay them with your taxes. For commerce and industry, you pay them as part of the in-built price of the products you purchase. So that is the payment part covered.

For my example about radioactivity, if you come down with cancer, won't you be glad that some scientists tinkered with radioactivity and you can go through chemotherapy? I could give other examples for different areas of scientific research, but you get the idea.

How sad that in this post you do not distinguish between the science of manipulation and the science of understanding.

 

[Jeremiah]

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.

Let me ask you something.

If atheism is not a faith, support the assertion with something more than "because atheism is lack of belief" because that is demonstrably false.

"because atheism is lack of belief"

Where is the rest of it? If that is not a mistake than it is dishonest. Now I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed. But my mamma taught me that honesty is an important part of trust and trust is needed to have faith in one another. Some sound thinking on my mamma’s part.

What to do? What to do? Hmmm.... I'll be nice and overlook it this time.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Most sane people believe in the physical world regardless of philosophical stance.

Too bad science science has shown that their physical world is an illusion.

 

[Jeremiah]

Too bad science science has shown that their physical world is an illusion.

Smack yourself with a baseball bat than tell me what an illusion feels like.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Smack yourself with a baseball bat than tell me what an illusion feels like.

Being hit by a baseball bat doesn't mean it ever touched me. (Why don't try reading a little science?)

 

[blackout]

This only shows you do not understand the meaning of the word science.

care to ejekate? elaborate?

I'm the first to admit I'm not a "science/math" type.
I hardly understood a single word of my high school chemestry "lessons".
(of course the teachers THICK indian accent didn't help.)
The kinds of questions I raised there were never answered.
So I gave up.

In fact almost ALL of my questions (in every subject) have always been
of the "how do you know?" sort. That for me always seems to be the natural "qualifying" question to discerning ANY truth.
(History is another area where I finally just went through the motions of answering the questions the way they wanted,
so I could just get out of there "with decent grades" and go study music.)

Anyway.... I KNOW there are chemical reactions taking place all around me
every day, but I would be 99% oblivious how to name/describe them in scientific terms.
The finer nuances of the "science" end of it have nothing to do with my personal experience of life. and so what?

I enjoyed looking at different cells through a microscope,
(though not memorizing all kinds of "scientific" jargon,
wich I immediately forgot after jumping through all the test taking "hoops")

I LOVE observing life! The EXPERIENCE OF IT!
But the only observational experience I have of life is my own.

I am a musician... studied Jazz primarily and got my BFA in jazz and contemporary music (piano/keyboard emphasis).
Now if I tell you your favorite song is an "undeveloped" peice of "psudo-music", musically/structurally devoid of any higher creativity, and that your favorite musician only speaks a 5% dialect of the larger language of music (ie small musical understanding and vocabulary)....
will that, should that change YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE of your favorite song/musician?

Can I tell you ... because you don't know/grasp how an Eb #9 b13 chord is structured, and that it is of the altered dominant "species" , that you have "NO UNDERSTANDING" of music, and that your personal musical insights as an observer(listener) of music are pathetically invalid? laking in any relevent depth, or of lesser relevance than mine?

All that is really relevant to YOU,
is YOUR OWN experience of the music,
and what you observe there in your own personal reality.

You are in NO WAY obligated to "trust me" into liking/raising up/taking up "more sopisticated" forms of music,
just because I am the "expert" who "says so".
You may very well think that some of the most intense and wonderful "high level" music is total crap.
And if that is what you hear (total crap), than that is what it IS for YOU, in your reality. Or if you just don't get it? No biggie.
We can't all "get" everything. Know what I mean?

When I HEAR music, I can "hear through" it ... on the "technical level".... or I can just sit back and enjoy the ride.
If you "can't hear through" to the "structure" of what's being played,
you CAN STILL sit back and enjoy the ride. The EXPERIENCE OF IT.

And so it is, with science and life.

I may not be a scientist...
but you can't find anyone who loves life more than me...
and OBSERVING the details and nuances of LITERALLY everything
that "manifests" IN MY OWN PERSONAL REALITY.

My "spirituality" is not a "faith" either BTW.
It is my direct EXPERIENCE of life.
It is ALL that I (can/will) ever REALLY know.

 

[doppelganger]

You are in NO WAY obligated to "trust me" into liking/raising up/taking up "more sopisticated" forms of music,
just because I am the "expert" who "says so".
You may very well think that some of the most intense and wonderful "high level" music is total crap.
And if that is what you hear (total crap), than that is what it IS for YOU, in your reality. Or if you just don't get it? No biggie.
We can't all "get" everything. Know what I mean?

When I HEAR music, I can "hear through" it ... on the "technical level".... or I can just sit back and enjoy the ride.
If you "can't hear through" to the "structure" of what's being played,
you CAN STILL sit back and enjoy the ride. The EXPERIENCE OF IT.

And so it is, with science and life.

I may not be a scientist...
but you can't find anyone who loves life more than me...
and OBSERVING the details and nuances of LITERALLY everything
that "manifests" IN MY OWN PERSONAL REALITY.

This is great. What you've said about music is just as applicable to "God" and "Science."

My "spirituality" is not a "faith" either BTW.
It is my direct EXPERIENCE of life.
It is ALL that I (can/will) ever REALLY know.

What a terribly sullied word "faith" has become. Well, hanging out with the wrong sort of crowd for almost two millennia will do that to a symbol I guess.

 

[eudaimonia]

Let's make sure not to equivocate on two meanings of the word "illusion".

In one sense, illusion is meant to convey that something is mere appearance -- that it's not real and has no effect except on the senses.

In another sense, illusion means only that something is improperly perceived or understood, but it is very real and has an effect on more than just the senses.

A baseball bat is fully real. It is not mere appearance, and if it strikes you hard enough (however this may be understood at the quantum level) it will rearrange your face.

Science has done nothing to show that physical reality does not exist. It has only shown that it may be misunderstood.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[doppelganger]

The chances are that you got hit. Why else would I get the painful after-effects?

That's not a "truth" statement. It's a probability. For most things a typical person will encounter during a day, the distinction really doesn't matter, which creates the illusion that there is no distinction. But lurking behind the practical use of probabilities to structure reality, there is a profound effect on communication and understanding that can be gleaned from grasping that we don't experience a "true" world but a world modeled in thought, constructed out of assessments of probabilities. And these assessments are largely a function of individual perspective (assimilating sensory input with memory).

 

[Fluffy]

They DO both work with fire. I'm afraid I've missed your point. Do you think you could elaborate for me?

I am questioning the point of drawing upon that similarity. It is not necessarily inaccurate but it is either naively misleading at best or deliberately manipulative at worst.

More specifically, the word "base" has implications which makes its usage here extremely imprecise. A "base" is a fundamental or necessary foundation and it is true that faith is a necessary in both theism and atheism but it is necessary for completely different reasons. Theism asserts a number of conclusions and neglects justification thereby necessitating faith as the only option left to the believer. Atheism restricts faith to what is necessary in order to draw productive or meaningful conclusions. I certainly disagree, for example, that it takes faith to conclude that there is no god, at least in the way that you intend it.

The conclusion that "there is no god" does not directly rest on faith. It has various premises that in turn rely on other premises that eventually rest on faith. These premises include the existence of an objective world seperate from our mind in order to make sense of concepts such as "fact" and "truth", that our perception of this objective world is, to some extent, accurate and that we are sufficiently self aware and rational to determine when we have made an error in our reasoning. Even these premises have various justifications albeit not in terms of their likelihood of being true but in terms of the merit of holding them to be true.

The reason why this sort of faith is not really highlighted by atheists is because these are the kind of premises that everybody accepts. However, I guarantee you that you will not find an atheist who is so devoid of faith in the existence of an objective world that he will jump off a cliff to prove it (or won't jump off because he doesn't see the point of justifying a point to a figament of his imagination aka you).

Now whether this can be termed "faith" is up for debate. However, atheists can't be accused of anything but being imprecise in their assualt on faith. Clearer reading shows that, in many cases, the bone is with "arbitrary faith". The faith held by an atheist is an entirely different creature to that held by the theist.

Is faith in the face of evidence the same as faith in lieu of evidence? Most theists would say yes and happily hold faith of either category. An atheist would say no and restrict his faith to the latter only and even then sparingly and minding of the case for doing so.

Disclaimer: Some people do not believe in God on faith alone. Some people reject God on faith alone.

 

[MoonWater]

This is great. What you've said about music is just as applicable to "God" and "Science."



What a terribly sullied word "faith" has become. Well, hanging out with the wrong sort of crowd for almost two millennia will do that to a symbol I guess.

And how has it become "terribly sullied"?