(August 17, 2014 at 1:55 pm)answer-is-42 Wrote: I am not a theist in any way, but for those who do push the view that there IS no god then some arguement should be forth coming.I am convinced that there is no god. I cannot prove that an undetectable and cleverly-hidden god doesn't exist, but we can apply that to pretty much anything we can dream up. The explanations for god's existence that I held when I was a theist, and that I see theists use here and elsewhere, are unconvincing to me.
That said, it's not an issue for me. I am concerned with the ways that religion and religious belief can be harmful to people or how they can impede progress. But I don't need for everyone to be an atheist for those problems to be resolved. I just need for them to be reasonable. If being religious and being reasonable were impossible, then I'd be concerned about proving that there is no god.
"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
