RE: If I were an Atheist
April 4, 2015 at 4:46 pm
(This post was last modified: April 4, 2015 at 4:46 pm by Tonus.)
(April 4, 2015 at 3:40 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote: You say these facts aren't compelling.I did not say that those facts are not compelling. I said that claiming that it looks like the work of a creator based on emotional or circular reasoning is not compelling. Restating the fact that the universe exists and life exists within it does not make the claims any more compelling. Telling me that I see things differently because of an inherent bias is actually working backwards: I was a theist, and thus had to work past that bias in order to realize that there isn't one. The notion that some powerful being created all of reality is not falsifiable, since you can appeal to his power and qualities (and make or edit these as needed to cover any explanation). The notion that it all came to be through some unguided process is not, but as yet there has been no smoking gun that shows us that it could not have happened, but there seems to be lots of evidence pointing at how it might have happened.
And of course, this can all be made moot the moment god shows up and explains that yes, he created it all. Seeing as men have been waiting for that moment for some 2,000+ years now, I am not going to hold my breath.
"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