I don’t expect there are any gods, and I will be surprised the day one shows up and offers proof of its godhood. I do concede that it theoretically could happen, though I maintain that it is vanishingly unlikely.

I would say that it is the agnostic position that is flawed. First, it doesn’t occupy a halfway point between theist and not-theist as so many seem to want to use it. This is a single bit binary function; On or Off, black or white, with no grey.

I’ll ignore the historical Gnostics which early Christians declared to be heretics (making themselves agnostics?) and point out that just as Atheists cannot show evidence there is no god, Theists have no evidence that there is one (definition of Faith) and thus no-one knows and everyone is technically agnostic, making it meaningless.

For me the question is whether or not you live your life as if there is a god. Note, this definition may identify some nominally religious people as atheists, though they might claim otherwise. Con men who prey on the gullibly religious and p�dophile priests come to mind.

John Lennon almost said that.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

This is also undoubtedly true about the climate change issue, though I’m not sure if you are trying to make a point about climate change itself.

You’re right, my mistake. Let me restate that point to say that I don’t think many people are completely rational… even some scientists.

Remember, I pointed out that I didn’t think science was a religion, just that I think many people (by which I mean the majority) treat it as one. An example is the faith that many people in the US have that science will save us from climate change. They’re willing to bet our survival as a species on it. I can’t think of a better example of blind faith, after all, Abraham was only going to kill his son.

I don’t think it’s particularly important what one says when death approaches; I suspect that religious utterances coming from supposed atheists has to do with one’s upbringing. Religion never crossed my mind during my few brushes with what I perceived as likely or certain death, but then I grew up religion-free.

As for fence sitters, for me, these are people who refuse to choose sides, and anyone who calls himself an atheist is in my view not a fence sitter.

When i said “Attributing likeliness or unlikeliness to something unprovable and essentially unfalsifiable is pure sophistry.” I was referring to the specific case of solipsism. I agree that it’s unlikely that the FSM or the invisible pink unicorn, despite them being unprovable. And,

I am an atheist as well, but like i said in my earlier post, if you don’t believe or disbelieve completely you’re nothing but a leaning fence sitter. I remember once when i was swimming I was caught by an under tide, and after god knows how much time struggling, i started getting a cramp in my calf. I was absolutely sure i was going to die. Despite being an atheist, the kind that mocked theists and put fundamentalists one step above the slug on the evolutionary ladder, i prayed. I prayed my ass off. I was saved by a windsurfer who noticed me struggling. He later said he had been maneuvering for ten-fifteen minutes against the wind before he got to me.

This episode didn’t change my mind about my fence leaning, but i learned humility and, i like to think, a little wisdom. Theist who listen to my story say it’s obviously god who intervened. Atheists scoff at my lack of faith in the no-god. Or something. I don’t get any atheists, including myself.

I forget what my point is.

the end

However, your comment that it would be pure sophistry to claim to be able determine the likeliness or unlikeliness of something unprovable does not make sense.

Strictly speaking, outside of mathematics there is no such thing as perfect proof, meaning that the truth of nearly everything we “know” must be categorized as likely or unlikely. In some areas we have collected so much information that we can be virtually certain that our analysis is correct, in others we speak only of possibilities for want of information.

Thanks to scientific method, we have collected a huge volume of information on the world around us. Any idea that is consistent with this information and is itself based on scientific observation would clearly have to be categorized as more likely.

On the other hand, ideas, such as that of the existence of god (s) and / or flying spaghetti monsters, people who can heal by sticking their hands into people’s chests without creating a wound etc., would contradict much of the knowledge we have collected over centuries and would throw into question not only nearly everything we know, but also scientific method itself. Thus far, we have never had a reason to doubt scientific method.

Therefore, it is anything but sophistry to judge the probability of an idea by the degree to which it is consistent with the body of scientific knowledge. Sophistry would be to claim it is otherwise.

To put it another way: accepting the possibility of an idea that contradicts all of your knowledge and observations is a fast track to madness. It is logical to treat such ideas with extreme skepticism. The possibility of the existence of god (s) is an idea that deserves our most extreme skepticism, and it is not reconcilable with logic.

Evidence and lack of evidence do not carry the same weight, yet for a fence sitter they must. I consider it disingenuous to be a fence sitter if you are not always ducking flying spaghetti monsters, which you can’t be sure aren’t flying about your ears at this very moment. Me, I’ll spare myself the ducking, I’m pretty sure they don’t exist and I’ll get off that fence on the side of the evidence every time.

On the question of atheism and theism, I’m beginning to think it’s more to do with our egos than any desire for truth or meaning. Like someone once said, God is either the most important thing or the least, depending on it’s validity. Since it’s validity is, like solipsism, unprovable and unfalsifiable, it’s up to everyone to make up his own mind.

Very very very few people are able to believe or disbelieve completely, and of those who do believe completely, at the very least they should follow their religion in it’s entirety and without qualms or hesitation, according to the accepted scripture. With those who disbelieve, nothing is required and nihilism is not, repeat NOT, necessary.

The rest of us are fence sitters, leaning one way or the other, but not in either place actually. Pathetic but true.

And no, rational people don’t blindly accept anything a scientist says without asking why. Anyone who does that doesn’t understand science and isn’t rational.

The body of science that forms the basis of our knowledge of life, the universe and everything is not isolated bits of knowledge, completely independent of one another. Science is an interconnected whole, with scientists, and even just people who think scientifically, always at work checking for inconsistencies. Where these come to light, scientists go to work finding the problem. This system enables us to “trust” even those areas of science where we do not have personal experience, though it should be acknowledged that it is not the same as personal experience.

Yes, it is remotely (very remotely) conceivable that our senses are lying to us all of the time, and with perfect consistency so that we are completely unaware of it. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be much we could do about it. On the other hand, however, there is no good reason why we should believe such a thing to be true, even if it is an interesting intellectual puzzle.

I think the difference between your atheism and André’s agnosticism is Descartes idea “cogito, ergo sum” that you can’t really prove anything, other than proving to yourself that you exist in some way. Even your senses can lie to you (and regularly do).

Philip K Dick and others may take this to extremes by suggesting that you can’t trust any of your senses, but even without that suggestion most “evidence” is described to us by scientists (I didn’t see a big bang, or even deduce its existence from red shift) and our belief in them is an act of faith in the religion of science. By that I don’t mean that pure science is a religion, just that lots of rational people would believe anything a scientist told them without asking why.

Shrug.

Nevertheless, I am fundamentally against acknowledging the possibility of, for example, the possibility of god (s) without even the smallest scientific indication that such a thing could possibly exist. Doing so would logically force me also to acknowledge the possibility of other things for which there is not the slightest shred of evidence, and honestly, that would make life too complicated. The truth for me can be broken down into things I will say we “know”, i.e. things that are very likely based on the evidence. At the other end of the scale are the things for which there is no evidence, and which would contradict so much of what we do know that they would have to be categorized as absurdly unlikely. The existence of god (s) falls into this category for me.

As for the questions of “why” and “how”: I believe there is no why that we do not ourselves create, and our knowledge of the “how” is limited to our scientific ability.

Yet I would still argue that I have an open mind.

So scaryjim,life is not black-or-white. We do not need to take a “stand” as if belief is a battlefield.

I say that our abilities to perceive metaphysics(provided it exists) and physics are insufficient.

I admit that my and our knowledge is very few,apart from destroying ourselves.

This is agnostism.

Why focus on the negative? I think we have a pretty good idea of how the universe did *not* get here, no disrespect to the flying spaghetti monster.

Standing up and saying “we don’t know. We’re not smart enough to know. Not yet, anyway.” is the ultimate cop-out. We may not know it all, but there is a hell of a lot we do know. And not a scrap of it points in the direction of omnipotent beings who forbid graven images or beings with noodly appendages.