Strong Atheism starts from faith

[rjh4 is back]

You did notice the first line of that sentence right? "The only time progress was ever made in science. That was specifically about conducting scientific examination without the presupposition of God, it was not about the scientific method being the only method for evaluating truth claims.

Apologies and thanks for pointing out the distinction. I did not catch it before and it did not come up in our previous conversations even after I pressed things there. In any event, I understand your position regarding nature and logic.

On what basis do you evaluate other truth claims, e.g., moral or ethical truth claims?

I apologies if i gave the impression that i was speaking in certainties, that was not my intention. I still stand by the claim that the position that there is currently no valid logical argument for the existence is the only reasonable position.

Fair enough.

I'm sure you want to believe that, it makes it easy for you to reject any opposition to your own views with that mindset,

Maybe so

I am only interested in the truth, regardless of what it is or where it leads me. If there was a valid logical argument for the existence of God i would be forced to accept it and honestly would have no problem accepting it. I have no vested interest in disbelief.

While I certainly cannot prove that you have a vested interest in disbelief, so as to contradict what you say, I suspect that you do have such a vested interest. To believe in God is to recognize an authority higher than yourself and recognize that He has authority over your life. I suspect that you have no interest in giving up your own attempt at autonomy from God to willingly subject yourself to God's authority, and thus a possible vested interest in disbelief. (I know that you do not believe in God so you will argue that that is why my last couple of sentences do not apply. I understand this. My point is only relative to your comment about "vested interest".) I also recognize that you value intelligence and logic and you certainly must see how Christians regularly are accused of lack of intelligence and logic. So maybe this along with the desire not to be in a position to have such accusations thrown at you could also constitute a "vested interest in disbelief". I am not trying to debate the point, just give you something to think about. Only you can evaluate whether what I say really applies to you.

That shouldn't be the case considering all of the discussion we have had prior to now, i have been consistent in stating that claims about nature can be assessed through science, be it evolution of the age of the universe. Perhaps it was due to most of our previous discussions being about nature and science specifically that you have this impression.

I think you are correct here and I missed an important distinction. See my comments above.

I have ZERO evidence for the non-existence of God.
I have ZERO evidence for the existence of God.
I have ZERO reason to favor either position.

Get it?

I get it. You have no evidence for either the existence or non-existence of God. From that you say that you have no reason to favor either position...and yet you live your life as an atheist. So while you admittedly have no reason to favor either position, you do, in fact, favor one of them. Sounds irrational and arbitrary to me.

An Atheist, by definition, is someone who lacks belief in the existence of God, which i currently do. What i do not do, and this i think is where you are confused, is claim that it is certain that God does not exist. Yes i do live life as if their is no God, because i see no reason to have positions informed by a proposition that i do not believe is valid. If you saw no reason to believe that the world was going to live in 2012 would it be irrational to live as if it was not going to happen? Of course not, and my world view is essentially the same, just replace 2012 with God.

It seems like you have a dilemma in your thinking. You don't want to portray yourself as a strong atheist because you think that position cannot be held logically, so you fall back to an agnostic atheist position as you presented above. But you seem to fall back into the agnostic atheist position for argument sake only and the rest of the time live as a strong atheist.