RE: A View on Atheist
June 3, 2011 at 5:42 pm
(This post was last modified: June 3, 2011 at 5:44 pm by Faith No More.)
(June 3, 2011 at 5:00 pm)diffidus Wrote: Diffidus:
I would certainly keep an open mind that someone could possibly guess a sequence of 10 numbers.
The probability of guessing that sequence is 10^10, or one in 10 billion. So even if we assigned a different ten digit sequence to every person on the planet earth, there is only a 66% chance that anyone alive would have the same sequence as the one I'm thinking of. In a court of law, they consider a matching DNA sample even at the odds of 1 in a million that the DNA in question could be someone else's besides the accused. If you were on a jury, would you allow someone to go free based on a 1 in a million chance they might be innocent? 1 in a billion? 1 in 10 billion?
diffidus Wrote:Fundamentalism, for me, is a word that applies to someone who knows the answer even when the information to provide the answer is not available. In the case of Christians, they believe that God exists but they base it on pure faith and are not interested in facts. In the case of fundamentalist atheists, they believe that God does not exist and have closed their mind to the possibility even though they may actually be wrong.
I compared you to fundamentalists in the way that they think only their interpretation of the existence of God is the rational one.
Ace Otana Wrote:I think that about covers it.
Anyone want to add to this?
He is also telling us that no matter how infinitely small the probability of a God existing is, we should keep an open mind about it, and are unenlightened if we don't.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell