Also, folks who use the “you’re taking science on faith” have no idea how much of Science consists of your colleagues and rivals trying their best to discredit everything you have ever written. Anything which gets to be generally accepted as a useful model has been thoroughly attacked by people much smarter and/or better educated than you long before you ever heard about it.
Listen to yourself.
You’re now claiming that they didn’t find virtual particles, they " turned virtual particles in to real particles". Guess what that means they found, and turned into real particles?
Well…therein lies the problem you are asking me to have faith in another human being smarter than me or at least knows more than I do about that particular field of science.
But suppose you had faith in God instead of another human being, wouldn’t that be more reliable? Humans are falliable, they have their own agendas. What makes you think that your fellow man is looking out for you?
Most of this discussion (the part that’s not trying to answer ill-defined questions from someone who’s not really interested in the answers) ignores the body of atheists who are also ‘a-originists’: we don’t much *care *what started things rolling as it’s too removed from human existence to matter.
Which isn’t to say that those interested in cosmology etc. can’t talk about it if it is of interest, but I think the great mass of us who reject religion and godism aren’t hanging on the outcome. Just as there are those who are religious but don’t obsess over every fine theological argument.
So would this type of person be interested in what Ayn Rand says about objectivism?
Ya can’t spell anal without A-Y-N.
This supposes a few things- 1. that God exists. 2 that God doesn’t have his own agenda. and 3. that God is “looking out for us”. I obviously don’t accept 1., and 2. and 3. would be highly debatable even if I accepted 1.
Essentially, yes.
Except, God can’t tell you anything, or prove anything, or pass a peer review. If you want to know whether virtual particles exist, God cannot answer you. You can provide your own answers and attribute them to God, you can take the opinion of others who’ve done the same, or you can consult scientists that can actually provide evidence and thus meaningful answers. THAT is the reliable “faith” (again, “faith” in science is not at all like religious faith).
Well said, theories of the origin of the universe are not part of atheism, it’s a separate issue.
Okay, I’ll buy that, I couldn’t stand her philosophy anyway. Now, I’m just paraphrasing Human Action, so I’m sure you guys will correct me if I’m wrong. An Atheist is ethically neutral, but says that they do not find evidence of any God, is this basically correct?
Yes. Atheism is not an ethical position, it’s the lack of a belief in gods.
Oh, but you mistake me. I am not an atheist, although we have not found a church in our area that fits my Faith and my wife’s feelings very well. We currently attend Unitarian Universalist services, although I do not feel they have enough ceremony.
I trust in God to help guide my conscience. I trust in men smarter and better educated than me to tell me about the physical world, whether it is about the migration habits of a certain duck species, what makes stars shine, how muons interact with other particles, or what I have to do to get over a sickness. I have found that Science has a pretty good track record on how things happen, and on whys related to causality, although it is not the right tool to bring to questions about reasons or intentions.
I hope this helps clarify things.
I apologize for the double post.
Atheism is ethically neutral. Any given Atheist is as likely to be thorough rat-basterd as any other given person. People are more complex than their philosophies.
Ethically, atheists can be wherever they want to be. The only thing all atheists have in common is that we don’t believe any god or gods exist.
NO.
Do you understand this definition, yes or no?
Do you accept this definition, yes or no?
You are refering to “atheism”, but he is refering to atheists themselves, so the correct answer is no.
Well said; science is a very specific tool, used to gain knowledge of the natural world. Unlike religion, there is no component of ethics or morality to it. Science deals with true and false, not right and wrong. Thus, science is not sufficient by itself for humans to live meaningful lives, they must also have an ethical code. This needn’t be based on an afterlife or a deity, though, and I would argue that a secular morality is preferable, though both have some merits.
I think he has the basic idea by now. I think he meant that the mere fact that someone is an atheist is insufficient to make ethical judgements upon them, as atheism is ethically neutral.
If he meant that all atheists are without ethics, then I retract my blessing of his remarks. What say you, pchaos?
He has avoided any basic ideas about atheists for at least two threads now, so I doubt it.
Maybe I’m just an optimist, but that last post seemed much closer to the mark than previous ones, about atheists being angry at God, having religious weddings, and suchlike.
[QUOTE=Human Action;15972836
I think he has the basic idea by now. I think he meant that the mere fact that someone is an atheist is insufficient to make ethical judgements upon them, as atheism is ethically neutral.pchaos?[/QUOTE]
Okay, I’ll buy the ethically neutral part. However, when an atheist says that they lack evidence that God exists, I don’t see how that is consistent with being ethically neutral.