RE: What is Your Approach?
August 8, 2013 at 11:21 am
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2013 at 11:22 am by Faith No More.)
(August 7, 2013 at 11:59 pm)Locke Wrote: If that's the best argument, then why be gun-ho about Atheism either? Along that line of thinking, wouldn't it be equally incorrect? Why not just be Agnostic?
Others have already addressed this issue, but since it appears(I say "appears" because many before you have feigned interest in order to proselytize) that you honestly are interested in hearing the other side of the debate, I felt I would add my $0.02.
By the wording you have used in the section I have quoted it seems that you share the common misbelief that atheism is the stance that god does not exist, when, in fact, it is the position that the burden of proof that lies with those that claim god does exist has not been met. So, the term "atheist" does not denote the claim that a person makes about the existence of god, merely that it does not accept the claim that god does exist. Some atheists do claim that god does not exist, and those atheists are labeled "gnostic atheists," while that stake no claim are labeled "agnostic atheists." The majority of atheists I have encountered(so what appears to be a majority) are of the agnostic variety.
The big problem I have discovered, however, is that many theists take the agnostic atheist postion as one of intellectual cowardice when it is actually a position of intellectual honesty. They believe that it is an attempt to avoid having to defend any claims when it is actually the position that we don't have enough clear evidence make any claims in the first place. For some reason, many theists think that we must draw a conlcusion on god's existence based on the evidence before us, but these people need to realize that the conclusion drawn by agnostic atheists is that the evidence is insufficient.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell