Pascal's Wager

[Pete]

Sorry if I confused you. It's just that I've dealt with way to many people who think evidence of God is the Bible and it's frustrating. (Not saying you do)

No problemo my dear lady!

I understand now that wasn't you're implication but still, I don't like that definition of atheism for that reason. Like Adrian said, you shouldn't redefine atheism.
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Adrian was wrong since I never attempted to define atheism in any other way than that you all agree on. But given that definition there follows certain things that atheists have in common. It doesn't define the term "atheist" but it merely states a property shared by atheists. That may not be true but I fail to concieve of an instance where it isn't true. But one has to keep in mind that I don't believe there is such a thing as evidence that is not subjective and as such evidence of God is also subjective.
[quote]I am no scientist, I certainly can understand it when I learn about it but I don't have a degree and couldn't have a substantial discussion about atoms to be perfectly honest.

I don't see the need for being a scientist when discussing one's views. After all it'd make no difference if I was a bus driver or a physicist since that wouldn't make what I've said more right or more wrong.

I don't like to get into the nuances of what started life because I'm not qualified to debate that elvel of science.

That indeed is a very interesting subject but to my knowledge nobody has a clue as to the origin of life. So there's not a lot to discuss.

What I care about is the evidence that a personal god exists, of which there is absolutely none. And it is lack of this evidence that makes me 100% atheist in respects to a Personal god.

You'd have to admit that what you say depends on what the term evidence means and whether its subjective or not.

Think about the scientific process for a moment. Scientists take observations of the world and try to come up with ideas which will lead them to predictions. What they observer can sometimes be misleading. For example; it was not too long ago assumed that the mass of a neutrino was zero. Physicists were always assuming that this was the truth. I'm sure they based their opinion on what they considered to be evidence of their assumption or a collection of observations which seemed to imply it. So if, 10 years ago, you were to ask a physicist what the mass of a neutrino was they'd tell you that it was zero. But it has recently been shown that the mass is non-zero. So what they thought was a good reason for saying it has zero mass turned out to be misleading. There's lots of examples like that in nature. Some people, like Adrian, consider evidence to be defined as that which provides proof which is fine since that is how he chooses to use that term. However it doesn't mean that anything exists which fits that definition or that what he considers to be evidence of something actually isn't upon closer examination. Many physicists today believe 100% that photons exist. To them they believe that they have evidence of their existance. But there is also a Nobel Laureate (Dr. Willis E. Lamb) who was part of the creator of quantum electrodynamics who has argued that photons don't exist where by that he means that any so-called evidence that exists today can be interpreted without invoking the photon theory.

There is a very imporant distinction between having a very good reason to believe something is true based on observation/measurements of nature and the things in it, and proof of such things. That's why you will rarely see scientists that they have proved anything in the strictest sense.

Take the idea of the Earth orbiting the Sun. It was once believe that the Sun orbited the Earth. Then came along what was thought to be "proof" that the Earth orbited the Sun. Then came Einstein who argued that there are no preferred frames of reference and as such one has to first define what frame of reference they are speaking about before they can talk about the motion of objects. Thus in a very real sense one can take a coordinate system attached to the Earth and in that sense one can actually say that the Sun orbits the Earth. What is now meant by the Earth orbiting the Sun is in reference to a particular frame of reference, i.e. one which has the Sun at rest and which is an inertial frame of reference at great distances from the Sun.

Whew! All that typing made me dizzy! One bad thing about me posting here (and why I need to keep the number of my responses small) is that I have a bad back and sitting for this long is a no no for me.

Pete