The Case for Atheism

[frasierc]

Well the most pertinent question for a Christian doing science involves evolution. Is abiogenesis an open question for you as a scientist? After all if it turns out to be demonstrably true, you could still go on believing that God so fine tuned the universe at its inception that no further meddling was required. Or do you engage in apologetics to argue that only itsy bitsy evolution happens but none of the trans-species variety?

Thanks whateverist for the patience.

If I'm honest I'm not that familiar with the scientific literature on abiogenesis. It's an interesting question - but I would need to do some further thinking and reading to be able to comment on the data.

I try not to get too involved in the discussions of creation vs evolution - which is probably a bit of a cop out. I'm more confident of the evidence for 'itsy bitsy' evolution - which I think is unquestionable. But I'm undecided whether the data's sufficient for the 'trans-species' variety - although of course I'm aware that puts me in a bit of a minority opinion.

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The whole point is not to "presume naturalism". You are presenting the case for non-naturalism; the onus is on you to demonstrate the evidence for even supposing the actuality of such a thing.

I don't think the null hypothesis analogy is that persuasive. The way some use this argument I think effectively presumes naturalism - but from your earlier post I think you may have a more nuanced position.

But still I'm more of a Bayesian in that I don't think anyone really interprets evidence neutrally. For most aspects of knowledge about the world whether we hold naturalist or theist prior beliefs we still come to the same conclusions (e.g. gravity, whether to look when crossing the road etc).

But when it comes to interpreting the evidence for the existence of God our prior beliefs can have huge implications on the conclusions we draw about the data (or indeed what data we accept to be valid). So I think its more rational and transparent to factor these in and how they impact on our interpretation of the evidence.

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Frasier, we presume as little as possible... Some, even less.

However, like Esq has already told you, thus far, the track record for a naturalistic explanation for whatever effect we observe has been far greater than the one for supernatural explanations, which have landed zero hits.
Everything we know about the world around us has been acquired through naturalistic methods. Everything!
Given this track record, what are the odds that all conceived supernatural explanations have actually been invented by the human mind?

Hi pocaracas, as I've said previously I value the scientific method and it has led to amazing discoveries about our world. So I'm not in anyway trying to argue against scientific research.

But I want to make the distinction between using the scientific method for empirical research and the philosophical belief (naturalism) that the only things we can know have to be amenable to the scientific method.

The problem with this approach of course is that you can't do a scientific experiment to test naturalism. But if you can't test this assumption scientifically but claim this to be true - then you've refuted your assumption that knowledge can only be obtained through scientific means.