Thoughts on Atheism (and a plea to the religious)

[FallentoReason]

Science is by far the most humble endeavour. It has no agenda but to simply reflect reality through observation. Faith on the other hand says 'I know exactly where the universe came from'. Humble? I think not.

First, that has nothing to do with the point I was making. I wasn't claiming that science (which you're conflating with atheism) isn't humble; I wasn't claiming that faith is humble.

I was saying that there are valid arguments for which the claim, "Atheism requires a lack of humility" would be neither a strawman nor an ad hominem.

I should have clarified I was going off on a tangent I guess.

Second, science has its own assumptions (see methological naturalism, evidentialism, as well as the general fields of epistemology and ontology). The ideas that there is a shared reality, that external objects exist, that observations are possible, that our memories of the past are not fictitious--these are all assumptions. Articles of faith.

And so far it looks like it makes sense to have the faith these things are true, because so far they seem to work and we are able to make predictions about reality that do come true.

I always like bringing up civil engineering because that's what I'm studying. Your house is a testimony that these assumptions are pretty dang useful.

Science also makes certain truth claims regarding the world; if "I know where [x] came from" is proof of a lack of humility, then science isn't very humble at all. It purports to know the cause of earthquakes, the development of the human species, and so on and so forth.

Fair enough. Shall we say it has a 'justified ego' in that case? By definition if experimentation consistently lines up with a hypothesis then you know that is true. The claim is justified.