(September 29, 2013 at 5:08 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: I am no more going to be neutral in relation to the nonexistence of god than I would be neutral toward the nonexistence of unicorns. No one is logically agnostic in relation to fairy tales. Rather they take the atheistic approach. In fact, they even take the atheistic approach toward every deity except the one in which the profess unreasonable faith.
This is a good point. Everyone is an atheist to some degree. Is a Christian "agnostic" when it comes to Allah, or Vishnu? If not, isn't Christianity irrational? Is a Muslim "agnostic" when it comes to Zeus, or Ceres? If not, isn't Islam irrational?
Everyone lacks a belief in all but one, or a few, gods. They take the "default" position for all but that one, or those few. Therefore only the theist can differentiate himself, and only if he chooses. Lacking that, he is necessarily an atheist.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
