RE: Atheism, Evidence and the God-of-the-Gaps
June 15, 2015 at 1:25 pm
(This post was last modified: June 15, 2015 at 1:27 pm by Longhorn.)
Regarding the presuppositions Randy keeps talking about
It's actually theists that are more often guilty of committing presuppositions than atheists, mainly because most believers were taught to believe from a very young age (not to say indoctrinated) and for this reason have not come to believe by examining the evidence and reaching their conclusion, rather they were taught the conclusion and later began to search for arguments supporting it (confirmation bias*). I have never met and would be extremely surprised to meet a person who had become a believer because of Kalam, Pascal's Wager or the argument from design; instead, reasons for believing are predominantly emotional, not rational, with the logical arguments serving as a confirmation of the already held belief, whereas most atheists have either been believers themselves and later rejected the conclusion by examining the reasoning, or never accepted the conclusion at all. This does not mean that atheists presuppose that god does not exist-weak (agnostic) atheism is the default position on the god claim: accepting the possibility of a god existing, but rejecting the definitive belief that one exists without compelling evidence, which is the default position on any such claim.
IOW, theists formulate arguments working their way back from the conclusion they had already accepted as true without the supporting reasoning, while agnostic atheists do not, because they haven't accepted either conclusion (god exists vs god doesn't exist), and thus it is more common for a theist to presuppose than for an (agnostic) atheist. QED
* http://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/confirmation_bias.htm
It's actually theists that are more often guilty of committing presuppositions than atheists, mainly because most believers were taught to believe from a very young age (not to say indoctrinated) and for this reason have not come to believe by examining the evidence and reaching their conclusion, rather they were taught the conclusion and later began to search for arguments supporting it (confirmation bias*). I have never met and would be extremely surprised to meet a person who had become a believer because of Kalam, Pascal's Wager or the argument from design; instead, reasons for believing are predominantly emotional, not rational, with the logical arguments serving as a confirmation of the already held belief, whereas most atheists have either been believers themselves and later rejected the conclusion by examining the reasoning, or never accepted the conclusion at all. This does not mean that atheists presuppose that god does not exist-weak (agnostic) atheism is the default position on the god claim: accepting the possibility of a god existing, but rejecting the definitive belief that one exists without compelling evidence, which is the default position on any such claim.
IOW, theists formulate arguments working their way back from the conclusion they had already accepted as true without the supporting reasoning, while agnostic atheists do not, because they haven't accepted either conclusion (god exists vs god doesn't exist), and thus it is more common for a theist to presuppose than for an (agnostic) atheist. QED
* http://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/confirmation_bias.htm
