(July 11, 2011 at 9:47 am)Theistsbane Wrote: Okay, I'll make this simple for you. I'll ignore the arrogance from which you proceed and focus rather on your fallacious argument. We could sit around doubting ourselves constantly over what "could" be. We could sit on the fence, like agnostics, and commit to neither school of thought. However, and I speak only for myself here, one need not prove that God does not exist to have a definitive answer. One need only prove that the existence of God is not NECESSARY to the existence of the universe. Science has done that. Case closed. Purple unicorns could exist, too. But wasting intellectual energy by refusing to accept the unlikeliness of such a creature is pointless. I accept agnostics as uneasy brothers and sisters in our plight, but fail to see how advocating the "maybe" stance actually helps anyone.
Diffidus:
Logic means to leave all your beliefs on the table and examine, in a brutal way, the deductions that are necessarily produced from a set of assumptions. The statement that God is not necessary to the existence of the universe is logically equivalent to: science is not necessary to the existence of the universe(if you assume God exists).
The case is not closed because you have no idea as to the currrent limitation of mankind's knowledge and, hence, you cannot make any statement as to the probability that God does not exists. The, so called arrogant statement regarding 'intellectual cowardice' was actually an allusion to a statement that Richard Dawkins has made at agnostics. Intellectually, however, it is much more difficult to stick with the actual facts, namely, that we do not have the knowledge to say whether God exists or not. If you 'take a stand' it is based upon your belief and not the actual facts - for me this is the easy way and involves no intellectual courage whatsoever. It is intellectually courageous to accept the world, including a realisation of our lack of knowledge, as it is.
