RE: Is Atheism Intellectual Cowardice?
August 16, 2011 at 9:00 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2011 at 9:01 am by Godnose.)
(May 10, 2011 at 4:29 pm)diffidus Wrote: ... a claim that God does not exist can only be made on the grounds of probability, based upon current scientific knowledge.
Yup! I believe in all kinds of pretty unlikely things, including electricity, black holes and (a high probability of) dark matter, plus all kinds of other equally un-obvious stuff. The reason I believe in these things is because people have shown me various proofs not only of their existence, but of the need of their existence. I don't see any need for the existence of a god - everything works perfectly well without a divine entity, so what's the point of it?
Materially speaking, that is. Of course there is a HUGE point to belief in a divine being, but it's purely psychological. That's one of my biggest problems in life, that I have to face up to - the fact that things don't happen on account of some divine providence, but simply because they happen in consequence of other things that happened already.
Sometimes things happen that you really want to have happened because of some "message" or "meaning" or something other than the sheer plain starkness of the ugly reality. But just because I want something to be so does not make it so.
I often wish that I could believe in some deity or whatever whom I could blame for bad stuff and thank for good stuff but I can't - and I'm not prepared to pretend that I do just for the sake of some kind of fluffy personal comfort.
