A noncombatant question for Atheists?

Question

If Atheists have "faith in logic" then, what are your beliefs when logic and science can't give an explaination?

Geoffrey, I feel like a noncombatant.
A helpless one. lol.

Answer 1

First, it is important, as a scientist, to point out that when logic or science cannot provide an explanation, it is usually because no one has expended the energy and resources to find the answer. On rare occaisions you can hit a computational wall or a physical restriction that limits the ability to do a cost effective look. However, these also tend to happen in areas that are not subject to religious debate. Two simple examples are the three body problem and the uncertainty principal. The three body problem is the primal problem that chaos theory derived from. Essentially you can qualitatively explain the outcomes, but your compututation is profoundly limited. In the case of the uncertainty principal, it says you can only solve half of the problem, though you get to pick which half you are going to solve.

Outside that, science really hasn't had much problem solving such questions.

I don't think it is automatic that atheists have "faith in logic." Only thinking atheists would fit in that category. Atheism is simply dropping the necessity of a god to explain how the world works. No scientist presumes that Zeus is necessary, nor the tooth fairy to describe the operation of the world. The only "evidence" for a god is the belief that one must exist, which isn't evidence actually, it is a hope instead.

Most thinking people, religious or atheist, have faith in logic. Logic is how people tend to work through causal problems. The alternatives to logic are goodness of fit type problems where you cannot show causation but can show that the explaination is well fitted to the observations. The problem with goodness of fit is that it is only a meaningful tool IF IT DOES NOT FIT. If it fits, it may just be that you are looking at too little data.

The existence of a god fails both tests actually. From a causal logic perspective, no divinity is necessary. It may not even be a sufficient explanation if you use a divinity as an assumption in the model. It also fails the goodness of fit test. The empirical data actually tend to go against a god and especially against an intelligent creator. A better fit are dynamic processes that are undirected.

Answer 2

Science isn't a closed subject, it's ongoing. There are many many things that are being studied but not yet answered. That's where the church falls flat. Religion ( Christianity) has only a few writings made two thousand years ago by people of unknown qualifications. They were superstitious beyond belief, but what they scribbled down is the guide to so many. Very strange. Where's the logic ?
Just look at the way life was even a few hundred years ago, back in Washington's day. Compare it with what we have today. Then thank our scientists. Sure they don't have all the answers to everything - - but they're working on it .
Now lets think about church beliefs. Angles, half human - - half bird. If they were able to fly horizontally their wings would have to be attached to the small of the back. They're never shown that way.
Give me a good explaination of just what the trinity is. Three people make up one "God", Is that senseable to you ? God is the father, but the ghost conceived the child, ?????
Just what is a soul ? What does it look like, feel like, smell like, how big is it ? Why haven't our doctors working on people right at the point of dieing, never saw any sign of it ?
Science doesn't have all the answers, but the church has none.

Answer 3

"Faith in Logic" is not what makes a person an Atheist. Not believing in God is what makes a person an Atheist.

And Logic and Science don't always have immediate answers. For thousands of years, there were no scientific reasons why parents' traits were passed on to children, but that didn't mean there was no answer, only that it hadn't been deduced and/or discovered yet.

Answer 4

It's tougher to change a belief than an idea. Beliefs are systems, almost like a single way of looking at things. Ideas can be changed when both faith and logic can not supply an explanation.

Just look at the problem in a different way, create a new idea about the situation.

Answer 5

If science can not at present explain something, one simply considers it unexplained. In time, a scientific explanation may well appear, but it is not a disaster if one does not. We don't yet know how life started on this planet, and investigations of the subject are difficult (we don't have a planet-sized life-free laboratory to play with, or hundreds of millions of years to do so), but that does not mean that it will never be done.

Answer 6

Then it should be recognized that the question can't be answered currently and that further study and investigation are required. It may be unanswerable or it may eventually be answered. This assumes that the question is posed in a way that can be thought about rationally, of course.

This is a good question and not to nit pick but the word should really be non-combative. A non-combatant is a civilian in a war zone.

Answer 7

logic, by definition, is something you don't need faith in. Honestly, if you're trying to paint the concept of logic as an enemy, you have serious problems. Same with science. They aren't designed to attack religion. And if they fail, then all other options must be considered, not just "the religious one" that lots of people want to believe. Miracles could be aliens, Greek gods, the LAw of Attraction, any number of things.

Answer 8

No, its not "faith". Its knowledge. If they can't give the answers, then we keep searching for the answers. We don't just give up the question and throw up our hands to make it easier.

Religion says "I know everything because my religious book written thousands of years ago when people believed the earth was flat said so". Atheists say "I don't know but I'll find out and I'll keep searching until I do".

Atheists aren't scared to not know something. Not knowing doesn't invalidate their whole lives.

Answer 9

Your understanding is still faulty. I do not have "faith" in anything. I know that the scientific method explains many things that I know. Not that I have faith in, but that I absolutely know for a certainty. Everything else is "yet to be decided" with many things leaning toward "appears to be true" and many other things leaning toward "appears to be untrue." Faith, the "assured expectation of things not seen" does not even enter the equation. When science can not give an explanation to something it remains in the unknown category until more evidence or a better theory comes along, then it is reevaluated.

Answer 10

I believe that some day, they will be able to give an explanation. I always believe that there IS an explanation, we just might not have found it yet. Something that seems to defy explanation makes me curious, but I don't attach any sort of supernatural significance to it.