RE: Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?
March 21, 2017 at 3:49 pm
(This post was last modified: March 21, 2017 at 3:51 pm by Simon Moon.)
(March 21, 2017 at 2:45 pm)SteveII Wrote:(March 21, 2017 at 2:08 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:
Methodological naturalism makes no truth claim. It is a method, a strategy, used in science for pragmatic reasons.
But it does when used in the social sciences! It assigns evolutionary theories by fiat (certainly not with any kind of proof) to questions like "how did religion evolve?", "how did morality evolve", etc. when a theistic worldview has very different answers to those questions.
Except that the scientific answers to those questions are not truth claims. They are the best models of reality given all available evidence. They are NOT advanced by fiat (scientists would laugh at that claim), they are ALWAYS advanced provisionally, not dogmatically.
Problem with the answers given by the theistic worldview, they can't be tested.
As Brian37 says, if a scientist in any country, culture and/or religion does an experiment to find the speed of light, they will all get the same answer.
Ask them to answer those other questions you mention, and you will get different answers, depending on whether they are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, etc, etc.
And here us atheists are, with no way to test to see who is right, if anyone.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
