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Permalink Reply by Dean Loring on March 27, 2012 at 11:15pm

No and yes.  It's the 'limits and boundaries on the unknown' that makes it smaller.  The 'Heisenberg Compensator' was a metaphor but QM per se has nothing to do with the matter. 

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Permalink Reply by James Yount on March 28, 2012 at 2:15am

I think it requires a certain level of faith to be atheist, which is why I'm agnostic.

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Permalink Reply by James Yount on March 28, 2012 at 10:04pm

Atheism is a rejection of theism at it's core is it not? But do to mankind's current limitation in technology and science, a lack of some sort of higher being cannot be conclusively tested by the scientific method. Therefore, there is no proof making Atheism just as much a faith as any religion because it requires a belief in something without proof.

Frankly, I love atheists because I think as a whole, they're more logical than the religious. They also generally support the sciences more, thereby helping us all move further. But we have to all keep in mind that it's OK to keep an open mind, especially when we converse with our religious friends. If we come across as arrogant know-it-alls then we discourage people from the ideals of the non-theist.

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Permalink Reply by Mick Ohrberg on March 28, 2012 at 10:06pm

No, atheism has NO faith involved. It's not a _faith_ that god/gods do not exist. It's simply a position that due to lack of evidence for this existence, it's extremely improbable.

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Permalink Reply by James Yount on March 28, 2012 at 10:43pm

Who's to say it's extremely improbable? How do you even begin to work out statistical probability for the existence or non-existence of something? Whether or not you would acknowledge it, there is a leap you have to make to make a decision about something that can't be proven.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on March 28, 2012 at 10:23pm

James, if atheism is a kind of faith, then the absence of horses is a kind of horse. You're talking nonsense. One need not have faith to know that fiction is not real.

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Permalink Reply by James Yount on March 28, 2012 at 10:37pm

Athiests believe that there is no god without any proof. That is a faith. It's athiesm not afaith. Agnosticism is not a faith because it refuses to hold to beliefs that it can't prove. Athiesm is a kind of faith, agnosticism is not.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on March 28, 2012 at 10:51pm

Agnosticism is a step in the right direction, but atheism is absolutely not a kind of faith. That's a claim that theists make about atheism (which is partly why some of us find it so offensive), and it is strictly incorrect. Atheists hold that there is no god by the same reasoning that we know there is no Huckleberry Hound. We know the character to be a work of fiction. The fact that somebody made something up does not give it a leg up in the existence probability sweepstakes. Do you seriously believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has any positive probability of existence? No, you don't. You know for a fact that the probability of the FSM existing is precisely zero.

And anything godlike that we might find would not, in fact, be a god, now would it? There cannot be any such thing as the god of the Bible, since it is a self-contradictory fictional entity. Anything in the ballpark would be an alien being or some force (or forces) of nature. But definitely not a god.

The only god claim left standing is the deist "the universe is God" claim, which suffers from the problem of irrelevance (why give the universe a pseudonym?), and in the case of a deist creator, the problem of infinite regression.

Demigods could simply be powerful aliens, but an omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent creator god is simply not possible. That's got nothing to do with faith.

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Permalink Reply by Dean Loring on March 28, 2012 at 9:38pm

Faith requires neither evidence nor reason.  Faith is the antithesis of reasoning based on logic and  evidence.  Faith is the only refuge for those who accept the unreasonable and illogical. 

Atheism is based on logic, reason, science, as well as historical and psychological foundations. 

As an atheist I hold a particular view because it was reasoned or demonstrated.

It's simple.  As Bertrand Russell asked, "Where did God come from?"  Either an infinitely intelligent and powerful, and either loving, vengeful, or distant god has always existed; or something created such god/gods/God and now that has to accounted for, thus creating an infinite regress.  I contend that the laws of logic Kant be limited by the transcendent.  That is a function literature and art.

If more atheists really understood logic there be fewer agnostics.

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Permalink Reply by James Yount on March 28, 2012 at 9:55pm

And what proof would you offer to back up your belief? Generalizations are wonderful. It's like when a christian says that he sees the order of the universe as an evidence of intelligent design... When we get into specifics, that's when these things fall apart.

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Permalink Reply by Dean Loring on March 28, 2012 at 10:23pm

There you go again.  Now you're using the term belief instead of faith.  The issue I think is a confusion of the meanings of faith and belief with those of proof, reason, logic, and evidence.  Can't argue with a disconnect.

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Permalink Reply by James Yount on March 28, 2012 at 10:33pm

Faith is belief WITHOUT proof. I've always attached that precursor.

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