Do atheists need some faith?

[genkaus]

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/q...gbang.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument

What of it?

[Selliedjoup]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument

What of it?

That's what it is. I was expecting proof.

[genkaus]

What of it?

That's what it is. I was expecting proof.

Did you read it then?

[Nemo]

i have faith in myself. is that not enough?

[Felasco]

If so, isn't there a little faith involved that there really isn't any evidence for theism that may have been overlooked or yet to be discovered?

Only 100 years ago before Hubble we didn't know of the existence 99%+ of the universe, billions of galaxies, that we now know are there.

Before Hubble, the reasonable statement would have been...

"We don't know if there are more galaxies than the Milky Way."

Not...

"There are no galaxies other than the Milky Way."

[Ben Davis]

Just so we understand what we mean by 'faith', here's a nice little vid from NoelPlum99 with which I agree. For me, it illustrates the likelihood of faith in rational/empirical scenarios: the more evidence there is, the less likely it is that faith will be required to believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9T2Q0kNjnA

[The Grand Nudger]

It seems that many atheists are atheists not because of evidence against theism but because of a lack of evidence for theism. Is this true?

In my case, both actually, so no, no faith required. The only requirement is literacy/a functioning brain. As far as I'm concerned, gods are stories -because every piece of "evidence", in fact everything about them, are stories-. There isn't anything else (but we have libraries full of those stories). I mean, ffs...it's not all that complicated in and of itself.

Sure, we could invoke phantoms to muddy the water, but if we're going to do that why stop with gods? Maybe a divine presence is at work when I cook a hotdog, Salamanders flit around inside the hotdog, heating it up. Hell, maybe hotdogs aren't processed meat at all, but instead magical concoctions of aether and good intentions....etc..etc...

Let's suppose I just never considered the issue at all though? How much faith does it take not to give a shit whatsoever? Probably none, but that's just a guess.

[Simon Moon]

Of course, atheists need faith that materialsim is an appropriate way to assess the existence or non-existence of a god.

What other method would we be able to assess whether a god exists or not, if not demonstrable evidence, reasoned argument and valid logic?

Let me know what method you think works best and I will sincerely (if I haven't already) attempt to utilize it to assess the existence of a god.

Until then, the fact is, I have never been given a valid reason to justify belief that a god exists, so I continue to not have any beliefs that one does. As an atheist, I am not claiming that a god does not exist, only that I am not justified in believing one does exist.

[Felasco]

What other method would we be able to assess whether a god exists or not, if not demonstrable evidence, reasoned argument and valid logic?

Whether another method is available doesn't speak to whether evidence, argument and logic are qualified to determine whether a god exists.

It's not that hard to propose that the abilities of a single species on a single planet, in one of billions of galaxies, would most likely not be qualified to answer such a huge question such as "what does or doesn't lie at the heart of all reality?"

We might recall that we were only recently living in caves, we spend billions maintaining enough weaponry to extinguish our entire civilization in about an hour, and we are rather busy knowingly destroying the environment we depend upon for our survival. The evidence seems to indicate that aren't exactly a genius species.

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh IDK, have you seen any other species capable of single-handedly marring such a large rock? Do we have any competition from the grey squirrels in the area of nuclear proliferation? Let's not assign to ignorance those "accomplishments" which we have negative personal value judgements of. It isn't exactly easy to exploit an entire planet, at least as far as we know, which is what all reasonable statements of knowledge have as an unspoken provision. Whether or not things exist that are beyond our ability to comprehend is beyond our ability to answer -by definition-, we do not know what we do not know. We may assume that there are such things, but why? Experience tells us that while we often manage to get things dismally wrong our ability to pierce the veil of mystery surrounding us increases exponentially over time.

Might there exist some things which we are incapable of perceiving by any means? Well, lets do a little thought experiment and assume that there are. In what way, if they are completely imperceptible to us, would they be a part of our reality, our universe, our cosmos? None at all. If these imperceptible things were literally dancing a jig on my head right now it wouldn't matter in the least, would it? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating intellectual laziness, but if we're willing to invoke complete and utter inability to answer such questions then the question itself becomes meaningless.

Now, all that being said, are you entirely sure that the god question deserves this much respect and consideration? I certainly don't think so. Personally, I think it's a question that has escaped scrutiny due to deference to tradition and antiquity and nothing else. Do you see any serious debate as to whether or not dryads are tending the thickets outside our homes? No. Why not? Because that would be idiotic.