RE: Atheism -"No God, "religion has no validity"
February 18, 2015 at 8:43 pm
(This post was last modified: February 18, 2015 at 8:44 pm by Simon Moon.)
(February 15, 2015 at 5:09 pm)dreamsofpotato Wrote: Got into a small debate with someone over atheism, thought i'd come here for some advice:
I said i'm an atheist. He responds and said he could never be one because atheism says there is absolutely no god and nothing created the universe. I disagreed with that definition and said that I'm pretty sure the only absolute claim that atheism makes is that Religion has no validity, no credibility in any sort of cosmological debate, that religion is made-up and the gods of those religions are made-up. As for cosmology, I said, most atheists leave that question to science.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this argument. Should i not have argued and accepted his definition of atheism? Was I wrong in my definition? Does such a claim warrant a correction? Or were we both splitting hairs?
As far as I know, very few atheists claim to know, with absolute certainty, that no gods exist.
Your friend is creating a straw man by defining atheism his way, then arguing against that definition.
As far as how the universe came into existence, or more accurately, how it got to its present state, is a separate issue from atheism.
An atheist does not have to have any specific explanation for the existence of the universe. Simply not accepting the theist explanation is more than adequate.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
