They may be considered informed opinions based on objective data, but to conclude that there is no God period-- to rule out any possibility that there could be one?-- requires either powerful faith or willful ignorance of alternate possibilities. Both of which are qualities you find among hardcore followers of a religion.
Willful ignorance? How do you figure? The only way you could claim this is if these "alternatives" are provable, unbiased, reliable, and repeatable but denied nonetheless.
Follow my logic here:
Let's say there is a metaphysical question for which we don't know the answer. Let's say it's the "Why are we here?" question. Which, by the way, to a freethinker/atheist, this is
really a futile question. Life does not have to have a "purpose" in order to make it precious, worth living, and worthy of being kind and decent to your fellow humans. I don't need a "silly man in the sky" to conclude my "purpose" here.
But I digress. Let's say, for the sake of argument we are attempting an answer to this. We really don't know. For all we know the Flying Spaghetti Monster put us here. But according to the scientific evidence, there is no evidence of an intelligent creator. It just isn't there in any field of science. As a matter of fact, if you look at what's going on in the field of Cosmology (I can't link it yet, but take a look at the work of Lawrence Krauss), Embryology, History (Bart Ehrman, for example) and Biology, there is more and more evidence that there is no "Prime Mover" at all, of any kind. To make a claim that "it's possible" that a God put us here is wishful thinking.
Let's stop and think about Evolution for a second. Evolution is a fact. Arguing over that is just stupid. It's like arguing over Santa Claus. If you want to take the middle ground and say "Well, that's just the way God does creation, then." If you really took a good, long look at how evolution works, then to say that "evolution is God's way", you are forced to say in the same breath that he's not very good at it.
The mind of Faith says, "To say that there's no creator is depressing. The conclusion I WANT to come to, is that there is a grand purpose put forth by a God." That is arguing from ignorance. I'll side with the evidence that we have and make the inference that the evidence for a creator just isn't there.
If you have this provable, unbiased, reliable, and repeatable evidence for an intelligent creator, I'm all ears. But after looking at the answers science is giving me, I'll stick with the facts for now.
If you want to call that "willfull ignorance", or faith on my part, then so be it. But I don't see how an educated deduction of the facts really makes it willful ignorance, especially since I am open to that as a possible conclusion. I just don't make conclusions on pure speculation or on the "need to have" a God.
All religions do not believe in a god or the supernatural.
