The Case for Atheism

[Mister Agenda]

...what we're trying to explain to you is that your question demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what exactly atheism entails.

I believe it, atheism, entails much more than you currently allow. Even just the lack of belief influences the beliefs you do have. The exclusion of God, gods, divine influences and transcendent principles all have logical conclusions. While such exclusions make a good working methodology for science, it is an impoverished way to approach all of life.

Atheism doesn't exclude transcendant principles, just believing in gods. Yes, not believing in something can have an effect on your other beliefs, but what that effect is varies from person to person. if you once believed in God and no longer do, the effect of what led you to give up belief in God may be much more significant than the effect of not believing and is almost certain to be more revealing.

You end your post with a mere assertion of the inferiority and the implied superiority of yours, and that used to surprise me about you, but I've come to accept that it is instead typical of you.

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A purely scientific description of a tree would include only quantifiable facts: weight, material composition, number of leaves, etc. Any references to tree qualities would not be strictly scientific: reference to uses, symbolic associations and signification, sensable qualities. That doesn't even mention the pre-scientific ability to classify things and events with common features as identical.

Given how long you've been interacting with us, the ignorance required to think we can't appreciate the beauty of a tree or its poetic use is simply breathtaking in the deliberateness necessary to maintain it.

Like the development of nuclear weapons? Science, both as a means of inquiry and its conclusions, does not exist in a vacuum. Science falls within a larger context, a world of values and meaning, even if those values and meanings are provisional.

You are correct.

And I have to throw the bullshit flag on "intellectual honesty." You may have an honest opinion, but that doesn't exclude others from also honestly holding their contrary opinion.

When someone holds a contrary opinion to you about what YOU think after you've told them what you really think many times, that DOES require some dishonesty. If an atheist says theists don't accept science, they're overgeneralizing, but if pressed, most will admit that. I don't respect the ones that won't.

You know the ranks of atheists include great authors, poets, and artists; just like we know theists can claim great scientists. Will you ever be able to process the fact that our atheism isn't the most significant thing about us and that you can't divine a random atheist's thinking, attitudes, or worldview if that's all you know about them? Because it's a demonstrable fact, and you never seem to be able to take it on board. There's a word for people who can't accept that members of a given demographic aren't all alike.

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And taking your advice, an enormous grinding sound is heard from science as it begins to come to a halt.

That may not be the case.
http://atheistforums.org/thread-18724-po...#pid442887

Try it in a lab and get back to me. Just pick the hypotheses you like, don't compare them to the null hypothesis unless you think it needs it, move along to the next steps and see what you come up with.