RE: My definition of being an atheist.
January 21, 2014 at 12:51 pm
(This post was last modified: January 21, 2014 at 12:51 pm by Alex K.)
@Sword of Christ
Well, what can I say. One has to make working assumptions in order to do anything, there is no way around it, and your religion is no exception. One can then consistency check whether it was an adequate assumption. For example you could make the assumption that the scientific method is a reliable source of information about the world. You can try to extract the same information in several different ways in order to check whether it is consistent (for example, we have many different ways to estimate or measure the age of the earth or the visible universe, which yield consistent results). When this works, you gain trust in the method. Since this has worked out since 160x, and among other things gave us all of technology, there is a LOT of deserved trust in this method. As a theist, calling this established trust in the scientific method "belief" in order to discredit it, is a complete own goal:
1) It shows that you either define as trust/knowledge gained by repeated tests - in which case you would not believe in God according to your own definition of belief, because you have set the bar to high!
2) or you try to claim that this trust is completely unfounded, thus displaying your ignorance of the history of science of the past 400 years, as well as a great amount of hypocrisy, since you are using the products which this scientific method has yielded.
Declaring an arbitrary question which possesses all the formal criteria to be the scientific realm as unanswerable, must therefore be justified. If you are a theist, it is transparent that you are engaged in wishful thinking and motivated reasoning if you try to declare precisely those scientific questions as unanswerable which are in conflict with your dogma.
Quote:Sword of Christ Wrote: You will need to hold a belief that the answer is scientifically answerable as a part the natural universe to begin with. This is a belief in something you don't and can't know much the same as a belief in God would be.
Well, what can I say. One has to make working assumptions in order to do anything, there is no way around it, and your religion is no exception. One can then consistency check whether it was an adequate assumption. For example you could make the assumption that the scientific method is a reliable source of information about the world. You can try to extract the same information in several different ways in order to check whether it is consistent (for example, we have many different ways to estimate or measure the age of the earth or the visible universe, which yield consistent results). When this works, you gain trust in the method. Since this has worked out since 160x, and among other things gave us all of technology, there is a LOT of deserved trust in this method. As a theist, calling this established trust in the scientific method "belief" in order to discredit it, is a complete own goal:
1) It shows that you either define as trust/knowledge gained by repeated tests - in which case you would not believe in God according to your own definition of belief, because you have set the bar to high!
2) or you try to claim that this trust is completely unfounded, thus displaying your ignorance of the history of science of the past 400 years, as well as a great amount of hypocrisy, since you are using the products which this scientific method has yielded.
Declaring an arbitrary question which possesses all the formal criteria to be the scientific realm as unanswerable, must therefore be justified. If you are a theist, it is transparent that you are engaged in wishful thinking and motivated reasoning if you try to declare precisely those scientific questions as unanswerable which are in conflict with your dogma.
