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

[Cyberman]

Re: OP, which I'm not about to quote since I'm sure we don't need to see it yet again:

Suppose that tomorrow, some cataclysm wiped out all our knowledge, all our history, all our discoveries and put the human race back to the level of our cave-dwelling ancestors (which they never did but set that aside). In time, it might be possible to rediscover all the major scientific milestones - fire, the wheel, metalworking, physics, astronomy, mathematics, telescopy, microscopy, evolution and so on. We will likely go in a different direction to previously in many ways, but fundamentally all those discoveries would be there waiting for us.

All the gods ever imagined would be gone forever.

[Jenny A]

1. Internet, computers, etc = evidence of science working.  Our knowledge and utilization of science on this earth has been successful.  Why do you assume that knowledge of the most complex phenomenon will ever be discovered.  Human kind, by your belief, will surely die off before that point.  Science is no where close to making sense of the origin of the cosmos.

I don't assume science will figure out the origins of life or the universe.  But, religion merely announces it has the answer, which is guaranteed not to find a real answer.  

2.  "Why put faith in the biased assertions of scientists over the biased assertions of theism.  (I say theism because the teachings/representation of a religion is not always what that religion was originally founded upon)."

Sorry for the bad writing... I didn't mean to convey that scientists were "biased" in my statement (although I have before).
I mean "biased" as in they already have their mind set of what they believe.  Their intentions are biased by trying to prove science creation, meaning they don't entertain the concept of a god in the first place. 

Actually, science is biased against any assertion not backed by evidence.  That's a good thing.  Why should anyone ever put their trust in something not backed by evidence?  Theist representations are not backed by anything whatsoever.

When I say, "the biased assertions of theism", I mean the founding fathers of the religion (eg. Jesus and followers, Muhammad, Hindu founders).  It was a comparison of the different bias, illustrating that there is also the same ignorance in the scientific community.  (Note: not ignorance of their pursuit to tangible knowledge, but ignorance in bias.)

Bias is deciding in advance of or despite the evidence.  Requiring evidence is the antithesis of bias.   That's what the scientific method does, it requires evidence before belief.

The choice between my saying that the origin of the universe was a giant chicken laying a cosmic egg and Genesis saying that it was god ordering chaos is precisely nothing. There is no evidence upon which to choose between those two assertions except bias.  If you look a proposal like the big bang, there is evidence supporting that.  You can rationally decide if it's sufficient evidence.  But there is no evidence for either god or my giant chicken--they, unlike the big bang, are of equal probability and there are an infinite number of such base assertions that might be made.  That is why such assertions are of no value.  Assertions made on the basis of evidence are weighable because they are based on evidence.

Now, once again I have a question and it's one I asked earlier:  why is it necessary to know the origin of life or the universe?  What's wrong with the honest answer:  we don't know? 

[Mudhammam]

I think it should be pointed out (though it shouldn't really have to be) that science has allowed us to understand a lot more about the origins of the universe than people who lived even a hundred years ago, much less in the times when mythologists were writing what would become the Abrahamic faiths of today, could have imagined. That's why faiths like Christianity now seem so incredibly adolescent and outdated. Who ever could have thought that space and time were dimensions that are fundamentally tied up in relative velocities of motion? Who ever thought of space as a landscape that is curved by matter? Jenny may very well be right that humanity may never come to grips with the most difficult questions our minds desire to know, and more than likely not within our own lifetimes, but the fact that we can even have that discussion in a serious manner is not a knock against us, if anything it's a testament to human ingenuity and how far our inquires have brought us, as they will continue to do.

[Esquilax]

1. Internet, computers, etc = evidence of science working.  Our knowledge and utilization of science on this earth has been successful.  Why do you assume that knowledge of the most complex phenomenon will ever be discovered.  Human kind, by your belief, will surely die off before that point.  Science is no where close to making sense of the origin of the cosmos.

What are you even trying to say here? We haven't found the answer yet, therefore we never will? We might not find the answer if we search, so we shouldn't? The complexity of an issue, or whether we'll ever successfully capture it, has no bearing on the value of the search, nor is it germane to your initial point in this thread, which is that we put faith in science. Regardless of the nature of the questions science attempts to answer, we have ample evidence that science is not only an effective way to answer such questions, as listed in this thread, but that science may in fact be the only method by which we'll even come close to an answer. Science has literally transformed the world more ways than I can count; we simply do not need faith to know that it is effective as a means of discovering the truth.

Sorry for the bad writing... I didn't mean to convey that scientists were "biased" in my statement (although I have before).
I mean "biased" as in they already have their mind set of what they believe.  Their intentions are biased by trying to prove science creation, meaning they don't entertain the concept of a god in the first place.  When I say, "the biased assertions of theism", I mean the founding fathers of the religion (eg. Jesus and followers, Muhammad, Hindu founders).  It was a comparison of the different bias, illustrating that there is also the same ignorance in the scientific community.  (Note: not ignorance of their pursuit to tangible knowledge, but ignorance in bias.)

How do you know they're biased?

No, seriously: how did you determine that? Do you have some way of knowing what the entire scientific community is thinking, as individuals? Do you even know any scientists personally? And if not, how on earth can you claim they have this overriding bias? How can you seriously be standing here and telling us that you know the innermost thoughts of people you have never met, from all walks of life, all across the world, and that they just so happen to fit into a single enormous generalization that just so happens to be the thing that means you don't have to feel bad when they disagree with you?

How can you honestly make such a ridiculous claim?

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's precisely because they disagree with you, and you're looking for, or have been primed to look for by other creationists, reasons to dismiss the possibility that they might have a point. It's easier to just tar the entire scientific community with bias, rather than to examine their findings and maybe, just maybe, see that they're right, isn't it? It sure makes it easier to stick with what you want to be true, when you can just recast anybody who dares say something different as people who are just out to get what you believe in, but that doesn't make it true.

It doesn't make it true, and as it happens, this kind of simplistic, self reinforcing delusion is easily falsified; why not look up Francis Collins, sometime? He was the head of the Human Genome Project, which sequenced the entirety of human DNA and enhanced our understanding of evolution greatly, and he's the current head of the National Institute of Health. By all accounts he's a good scientist with some excellent references under his belt, a member of the very scientific community you're talking about... and an evangelical christian. So much for the claim that scientists won't consider god, huh?

In truth, the scientific community is diverse, the people within it comprising many different belief systems. Your generalizing of them is not only incredibly simplistic, it's also not reflective of reality. It's also contradictory, as on the one hand you say the scientific community is biased against what you believe, but at the same time you believe (mistakenly, but you still believe it) that Michael Behe is a member of that scientific community, and he's a proponent of intelligent design.

So which is it? Is the community biased or not? Or is it only biased when it makes conclusions you don't agree with, and non-biased the rest of the time?

[robvalue]

Gomlbrobo: Science is the method of assessing the evidence and coming to the most accurate conclusion you can. I assume you would label God as "supernatural". As soon as you do that, it is instantly outside the scope of science. Science does not need to claim that the supernatural does not exist, but it admits it cannot investigate it at all. This is not being biased, it's been honest.

I've written more about this in my website:

http://robvalue.wix.com/atheism#!the-sci...thod/c1mtx

http://robvalue.wix.com/atheism#!natural...atural/czy

Do you have a way of defining God so that any sort of test could be made to assess whether or not he exists at all, or whether he is responsible for anything we experience? Until there is such a way, science has no way to assess it.

If you're talking about the "creation model" where God made the world with people on it fully formed a few thousand years ago, then that has been thoroughly debunked by science.

[Cyberman]

If this god interacts with the Universe in any way, those interactions ought to be detectable, if not measurable. To channel AronRa: anytime this god reaches down into the mortal realm, it should pull its hand out dripping with physics.

Conversely, if this god does not or cannot interact with the Universe, then it can be ignored as irrelevant.

[robvalue]

Even if it does interact, we have no way of correctly attributing causation to any particular supernatural agent. Whether God did it or a magic crab did it, the results look the same on our end.

[Cyberman]

That's where science would come in, to isolate the ambiguity. Unfortunately, we're still waiting for something to test.

Until then, the pragmatic view is to get on with life on the assumption that the gods either don't exist in a Universe like ours or are powerless in a Universe like ours.