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Do scientific atheists contradict themselves in their belief?
in Philosophy
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That is a random statement.
And I don't really have scientific credentials because I am 15. What do you expect?
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@Nope It is not the athiests who are trying to make such extraordinary claims, though. If you're going to insist in a divine creator and supervisor you need to be able to present some kind of evidence to show so. The very foundation of Christianity that is the Bible has been proven wrong in its answers to the most fundamental principals of the universe. It seems that with time the Bible loses legitimacy and people turn to it not for an accurate description of true events, but for morality - that's a whole different can of worms though.
After 2,600 years no one has been able to provide any real, testable evidence to support the existence of a god - that does it for me.
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Thanks in advance for respecting the debating method and keeping it alive.
"There's going to be a special place in Hell for people who spread lies through the veil of logical fallacies disguised as rational argument".
"Oh, you don't like my sarcasm? Well I don't much appreciate your stupid".
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Prove the Bible has been proven wrong and prove there is no evidence. Good luck.
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There is so much real, physical evidence that blatantly disproves such a thing. Take the Grand Canyon as an example. The lines you see are sedimentation lines that form 40 major layers spanning 2 billion years of deposition.
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Good. Then you shall have no problem providing the proof I ask for and yet you are.
Note, I did not ask you to make more assertions, but to prove your claims that the Bible has been disproved and that there is no evidence. I await your doing so.
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They do? Prove it? And naturally, he runs away. This is the "thinking" of the modern pop, ignorant atheist.
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Far from being arrogant the scientific method is one of humility. It acknowledges the limits of our current knowledge. It doesn"t provide explanations or answers from a position of ignorance, but investigates the unknown in an attempt to reach understanding based on empirical evidence. Surely it is the superstitious or religious approach which claims to know the answers without any evidence except "faith" that is the arrogant approach.
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I see atheists all of the time making claims that God does not exist, He is imaginary, a fairy tale, etc. You have proof of this right? And prove why I have to prove anything TO YOU for it to be real?
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And prove this whopper "Atheists and scientists go hand in hand" Show us how atheist metaphysics and ontology provide a rational justification for science. Then explain how modern science was invented by Christians while atheists are taking us back to the age of mysticism and witch doctors.
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It was not until the 1970s that this 'lack of belief" usage began. It was coined by Antony Flew, a famous atheist philosopher at the time. He said very clearly he was changing the definition to avoid the burden-shifting attempts of theists. He reasoned that if someone merely "lacked belief" they held no burden to support their position. This is not honest argumentation. Anyone who engages in a debate has the responsibility to offer support for their position.
This is a philosophical position, and thus a philosophy encyclopedia is a much better source than dictionaries. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu) is a very good source for philosophical understanding, and has the philosophical meaning of atheist--that gods do not exist.
That said, we cannot hold a position about something we know little about. So there is no problem with saying "I'm an atheist with regard to the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, since I've studied about that god. But my claim is not as strong with regard to the myriad Hindu gods. And I'm agnostic about a deist god, since it is by definition un-testable."
Definitions are fluid, and the definition of "atheist" seems to be undergoing a change. The philosophical atheists are losing the definition war to the Internet atheists. In a short time, "lack of belief" might be so widely used that it is considered the "standard definition," but it is clear to most people who have read the SEP entry for atheism that "lacktheism" is an inferior definition.
I used to hold the "lack of belief" definition of atheist, but it was because it seemed every theist in the world wanted to say "God exists because you can't PROVE He doesn't!" It can also feel daunting to come up with a solid argument against the existence of gods. But you said something in your longer response that was interesting. You mentioned "because there is no proof." In many cases, that's all you need! if someone says there's a God who interacts with the world, you can look for evidence of this interaction where it should be found, and if it isn't there, that lack of evidence is enough to reject the claim. You don't need to go half-way and say you lack evidence of the claim. Treat it the same way you would treat a claim of a Sasquatch in their back yard. If they can't provide evidence of the Sasquatch, you don't lack belief in it, you reject the claim.
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Not according to the Deckaration of Independence. U
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Agree completely. I touched on that in the fourth paragraph of my above post. I think my biggest problem with the definition of atheist is not whether it means "lack of belief" or "belief that gods don't exist" it's the attempt to apply it to all god concepts at once. There are thousands of different definitions of God, and each would need its own application of the word atheist. I'm a "strong" atheist with regard to the Abrahamic concepts of God, but I'm agnostic (or maybe more accurately, "apatheist") regarding the deistic god for the very reason you point out--it's untestable.
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Gnostic atheism comes in conflict with logic, not not science. As gnostic atheism denies the existence of all deities, to include impersonal deities (Which are unknowable).
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The belief god does not exist comes in conflict with the scientific method of figuring out if something is true. This is at the hart of science and I would say that it is a scientific belief. A lack of belief in god however is not contradictory to the scientific method. However the lack of belief in god was not the original meaning of the word. Word do change so I guess it is appropriate to call yourself an atheist if you just lack the belief in god. I perter the word agnostic to describe my self as not to draw confusion.
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"The belief god does not exist comes in conflict with the scientific method of figuring out if something is true"
This is why it's not in conflict, as impersonal deities are untestable, and therefore unknowable as far as science and the scientific method is concerned. It is however, logically dishonest.
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-fair/steps-of-the-scientific-method
I describe myself as an agnostic atheist, as I don't deny impersonal deities.
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