What Does Being An Atheist Actually Entail? (Theism in mind)

[robvalue]

We know that in all of science, everyone knowledgeable in the relevant field will be looking for ways to disprove a scientific theory. To do so would offer great prestige as well as satisfaction. It is the job of the scientist to further scientific understanding, and finding faults with theories is one major way to do this. So the fact that all these experts cannot find fault with the current theories is convincing evidence that the theories are solid, given our current understanding. (Some crackpot who has no understanding of the field posting unsupported drivel on the internet does not count I'm afraid. Otherwise science would be a random collection of arbitrary nonsense, updated every time anyone says anything ever. If their objection is sound, others will be able to reproduce it.)

To believe otherwise is to propose some conspiracy situation where theories are "guarded" and anyone discovering problems with them is silenced, before they can communicate it to anyone else or it gets out onto the internet. This includes literally anyone, who may even be schooling themselves in private. As soon as they found that problem, an alarm would have to go off somewhere and men in black appear to remove them before they could even post it on facebook or a forum.

If that's what you have to tell yourself, be my guest. Also: why exactly would the scientific community want to hold onto a theory that has been proven wrong, rather than improve it? That defeats the whole purpose of science. Unlike religion, science is interested entirely in reality and wants to model it as accurately as possible. It has no dogma, or requirement that certain theories be true.

On the other hand: religion has no theories, makes no useful or specific predictions and offers only unfalsifiable premises. No one can prove these things wrong, by definition, so no one is trying. But they are also useless because they tell us nothing about reality and their truth cannot be evaluated.