Atheism Undermines Knowledge

[Mister Agenda]

At the quantum level, matter and energy are probabilistic, at our scale that results in reliable laws of nature…whereas a single pair of virtual particles is wholly unpredictable, that a certain number of them (give or take a few decimal points) will appear in a given time in a given volume is nearly certain...because random things follow the laws of probability.

Your answer is begging the question. The question is about laws known by induction, including the law of probability. I accept the idea of statistical inertia, but only because I think there is a reason for statistical inertia. Even if the probability becomes near infinitesimal at the macro level, there is still a chance, however small, that things could suddenly get very strange indeed.

Are you saying that you can't accept a small chance things will get strange, no matter how many zeroes follow the decimal point? If so, do you have anything else besides your unwillingness to accept it to support it not being the case?

I can assure you that I fully understand existentialism. To some extent I am one and understand that even if you talk about those things you still recognize a point where one must freely choose without any possibility of rational support.

Is there ANY philosophy besides solipsism that doesn't have to resort to unprovable axioms at some point? I can't prove reality is real (nor can anyone else), but I accept it as an axiom.

Not in any monist theory in which everything has the same underlying nature. The material properties manifest at the macro level are still dependant on the fundamental material properties.

Water depends on water molecules for its properties. That doesn't mean the molecules are wet or that water only has two hydrogen atoms. Monism doesn't make the fallacy of composition not a fallacy.

Really? Many here seem to think it is a lack of belief in deity and nothing more.

It is.

If those participants don’t howl at you then they are hypocrites.

More likely it would mean they're not wearing the blinders you have on and recognize that by specifying which subset of atheists I'm referring to (the rationalists) I have avoided over-generalizing about atheists.

But to some extent I agree.

You only think you do because you misunderstood me.

Atheism constrains thinking along certain paths: nihilism or rationalism.

Nihilism and rationalism constrain thinking along certain paths, not atheism. The only path of thinking atheism constrains you from is thinking there is a God. There are plenty of atheists who are neither nihilists nor rationalists.

Is the rationalist position internally consistent? Not if it restricts its understanding to scientific explanations of certain phenomena and pretends the rest do not exist.

Then it appears rationalism is internally consistent, because I am not aware of any rationalist who would maintain that alternative explanations do not exist or that some of them may actually be correct.

That is fair enough, if your only concern is knowledge obtained by induction which you assert to work as a brute fact and doing precludes you from understand whole segments of reality.

What segments of reality am I precluded from understanding?

PS: Please forgive me for not responding to every point, in the interest of brevity I limited myself to what I thought needed comment. And thanks for such an interesting topic of discussion!