(April 22, 2011 at 7:02 pm)Garmston Ansell Wrote: I'm writing an essay about atheism and belief in god / religion. I'm not an atheist nor am I a believer in god. Basically I'm on the fence, and until now it's not something that I've given much thought to, hence why I feel the need to ask both sides. For the belief in god / religion part of the essay, I've begun asking believers and religious people about their views, and for the atheism part I'm here to ask about atheism.
So, any input will be appreciated. Thanks.
You are an atheist, anyone who does not believe in god(s) is.
Atheism is a rejection of claims made by theists about the existence of gods and those propositions that follow - The cause of the universe, the nature of reality, the existence of life after death etc - The rejection is most commonly on the basis that "none of these claims are supported by evidence" - A more detailed rejection is one such as "these claims fail to achieve epistemic justification" - They fail to reach achieve the support that would be required for any perfectly rational person to believe them.
For example, the "Personal revelation" touted by a great many believers as one of their core reasons for believing in a deity - An impartial and rational observer could not conclude for himself that a deity exists based on these revelations for a number of reasons, but the most obvious being that personal revelation is a standard of evidence that permits innumerable contradictory conclusions - One believer may receive a revelation from Jesus informing him of the truth of the trinity, another may receive a revelation of Allah telling him that he is the one true God - One person may have it revealed to him that it is okay to permit marriage amongst homosexuals and another may receive the opposite - Any standard of evidence put forth as an argument for the existence of a deity that yields such a great number of contradictory results simply cannot be taken seriously.
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