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Well of course you can. A high proportion of scientists are atheist or agnostic at least.
There are exceptions of course. Francis Collins comes to mind.
I don't understand how he squares the human genome project with his beliefs, but each to their own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
Compartmentalization.
It is the atheists who compartmentalize their understanding of Reality by equating it to the material "icons" in the "user interface" the brain presents to us so that we can function pragmatically within Reality. They refuse even to consider what the actual Reality MIGHT be because the user interface cannot adequately measure and represent it. Those with a deeper knowledge and understanding of the nature of the actual Reality as best we can discern it are less hindered.
This POV amazes me. No flaming, because obviously each person is different, but I look around and wonder how ANYONE can doubt the existance of God. Yeah, right, all of this just sprung out of nothing...
To me, the evidence for God is everywhere.
Yeah this is an old thread, from 2007 and I haven't seen jifncandy posting in a long time. I'd just like to say that every single person on this planet, whether they admit it or not, has or has had doubts about the existence of a god.
Nature and all that you see can be explained scientifically, no need for a creator. Maybe the things of beauty around us and just life in general seems as though there must be a creator but everything can be proven or verified through science. The real issue here is faith. Either you have it or you don't.
Some people choose to use logic and reason to determine if they should believe in the existence of a creator. As of right now, there is no such evidence of a creator. Therefore no reason to even think there is a god. Others have blind faith that there is a creator and that the bible is their god's "word".
I don't want to bash anyone's beliefs, that's not what we're talking about here. You said that you don't see how anyone could doubt the existence of a god but I wanted proof. Proof that does not exist. There is nothing I could say or do to prove that there is not a god. So, it's quite a conundrum. Prove it. It's your job to do so. I simply claim no proof exists, therefore there must not be a god.
With that said, the burden of proof falls on the person or persons making the claim for the existence of a god. Yep, you make the claim that there are UFO's all around us, we just can't see them.....you better supply undeniable proof or they gonna lock you up in a facility.
That's how I view Christianity or any other religion, this is not exclusive to christians. It's all nuts. Pure conjecture and hundreds of interpretations of a book that's already been interpreted and re-interpreted for centuries to the point that no one can interpret it properly, written by men, for men. So when you quote bible scriptures, that has no bearing on a conversation with an atheist since we don't believe.
The question of this very old thread was "vast knowledge of science to be an atheist?"........the answer to that is simply No. You don't need a vast knowledge of science because I don't. But I do trust it and there is no denying scientific facts. I truly do not believe that one exists or do I have blind faith in a god. So that means one doesn't exist, most likely.
Yeah this is an old thread, from 2007 and I haven't seen jifncandy posting in a long time. I'd just like to say that every single person on this planet, whether they admit it or not, has or has had doubts about the existence of a god.
Nature and all that you see can be explained scientifically, no need for a creator. Maybe the things of beauty around us and just life in general seems as though there must be a creator but everything can be proven or verified through science. The real issue here is faith. Either you have it or you don't.
Some people choose to use logic and reason to determine if they should believe in the existence of a creator. As of right now, there is no such evidence of a creator. Therefore no reason to even think there is a god. Others have blind faith that there is a creator and that the bible is their god's "word".
I don't want to bash anyone's beliefs, that's not what we're talking about here. You said that you don't see how anyone could doubt the existence of a god but I wanted proof. Proof that does not exist. There is nothing I could say or do to prove that there is not a god. So, it's quite a conundrum. Prove it. It's your job to do so. I simply claim no proof exists, therefore there must not be a god.
With that said, the burden of proof falls on the person or persons making the claim for the existence of a god. Yep, you make the claim that there are UFO's all around us, we just can't see them.....you better supply undeniable proof or they gonna lock you up in a facility.
That's how I view Christianity or any other religion, this is not exclusive to christians. It's all nuts. Pure conjecture and hundreds of interpretations of a book that's already been interpreted and re-interpreted for centuries to the point that no one can interpret it properly, written by men, for men. So when you quote bible scriptures, that has no bearing on a conversation with an atheist since we don't believe.
The question of this very old thread was "vast knowledge of science to be an atheist?"........the answer to that is simply No. You don't need a vast knowledge of science because I don't. But I do trust it and there is no denying scientific facts. I truly do not believe that one exists or do I have blind faith in a god. So that means one doesn't exist, most likely.
The OP is an argument from incredulity, and it doesn't make clear what the relation to the thread title is. But I guess the implication is a variation on the old stereotype that atheism typically is a positive claim that there is no god (it's not) and that you'd have to claim to know everything to make that claim (which is one reason most of us don't). In this case, the implicit claim seems to be that we think we are all super-genius level knowledgeable about science. So it becomes a not-quite-overt "you think you're so smart" ad hominem.
Atheism is simply not seeing a good or sufficient reason to believe the claims of theists, especially their specific claims about their particular deity of choice. There could, generically, be a god, but it's not likely. There could be a specific god like Jehovah, but that's even LESS likely. That is my basic position. While empiricism and rationalism fit well with science, making science more trustworthy to us that asserted and assorted religious doctrine, one need no more be an expert in the sciences to be an atheist than they need to be a theologian to be a Christian.
For me, atheism is a critique of what I regard as the failed epistemology of religious faith. It's ultimately about what truth is and how one accurately determines it. And since many of the believers most stridently against atheism are Christian fundamentalists, and since I'm very familiar with that as former fundie, AND since of late Christian fundamentalists have been getting really aggressive in imposing their will on the wider society in the US, I tend to focus there, as I see massive, republic-ending harms in that kind of thing if it remains unchecked. I maintain that authoritarian Christians are increasingly embracing fascism. And yes, i'm opposed to that.
Indeed I did use reason/logic in deciding to believe in God. ... God was the only one that was able to fullfill my needs. So i'm still aboard that faith plane flying over the chasm of logical gaps science couldn't answer for me .
I encourage all to hop aboard. The view from above is fabulous!
Clear skys all the way. And things begin to all make sense aboard the faith plane. And with God as my piolt there is no way this plane is going to crash! My God is all powerful, and all knowing. Isn't faith great!!!
So here we have a poster that had a need to understand and when they came up short they filled that need with imagination rather than more fact, and was entirely content to believe someone was "flying a plane" despite the captain's seat being vacant. That metaphor is a great illustration of how dangerous that mental state can be.
The poster's emotional needs being pacified by something, anything trumped being pacified by verifiable truth. There "needs" were in competition with reality.
Funny I did read the Case for Christ back when I was a believer and I thought Lee was on a roll putting together a solid argument, then in the last couple chapters made a giant unwarranted, unsustainable leap, and I had to close the book with pure disappointment and mumble something about, you were so close and then you had to do that. I wish I could recall the details, but I'm not going to read the stupid book again just to jog a memory. It was hard to believe that a guy that had such good sensibility would suddenly abandon it, just to claim something he wanted to claim, but really couldn't.
I think that's too often the crux of the matter, we want all the feel goods from religion so badly that we pretend the data and logic lead somewhere they, in fact, don't.
Oh and I would also note, that a part of why I revived this thread was the work that has been accomplished in the studies of RNA replication and speciation, which was infantile when the thread started, nice to see science solving mysteries, while god...... oh never mind.
And yet the conclusion of science is STILL naturalism.
You keep confusing the preference and assumptions of science with its scientific conclusions. Naturalism is NOT a scientific conclusion. It is an a priori assumption. definition, and preference, period because there is no scientific way to determine what the Hell "Nature" (aka Reality) actually IS or IS NOT!!
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It is the atheists who compartmentalize their understanding of Reality by equating it to the material "icons" in the "user interface" the brain presents to us so that we can function pragmatically within Reality. They refuse even to consider what the actual Reality MIGHT be because the user interface cannot adequately measure and represent it. Those with a deeper knowledge and understanding of the nature of the actual Reality as best we can discern it are less hindered. 
Yeah, right, all of this just sprung out of nothing...
