RE: Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?
December 4, 2016 at 9:12 am
(December 4, 2016 at 3:29 am)mihoda Wrote: Ah, you see. That right there is a tell that there's no there there. When people have dozens, no, millions, of different descriptions of a thing, there's no thing there. It becomes obvious from the different descriptions that more than one of them *could not* have direct experience with the thing in question. And therefore multiple stories are a dead givaway for a lack of evidence.
This. Theists will claim that god is supernatural and exists outside of our reality and cannot be tested or confirmed by science, but via different means. Yet throughout human history we have 'confirmed' millions of gods in dozens --if not hundreds-- of religions and tens of thousands --or more-- denominations within them. And we know that there are people who 'confirm' god through any number of spiritual or metaphysical or other means and then end up 'confirming' a completely different god at a later time in their lives. The methods they claim to use to confirm god cannot get them to a consensus. Indeed, it seems no different than any other form of tribalism in that it is largely based on where we are born and who influences us when we're too young to figure it out for ourselves.
If even the people who come here boasting about their irrefutable proof of god can't get their story straight, then god needs to step up her game already.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould