How can an Atheist claim that science makes their choice the most logical, when science does not? please read?

Question

A concept of a super deity that cannot be seen, measured, or categorized, only experienced on a deep and personal level cannot be proven, but since it cannot technically be disproven, the determination is not a positive yes or no. This is what is known as: Inconclusive. Therefor, the only stance that supports an inconclusive finding would be the logical choice, and that is Agnostic not Aethist.

I am not trying to get someone to change their beliefs on the afterlife, or lack there of, but to use such an argument as science supports my claim or it is more logical than yours is paradoxical and should not be used.

Answer 1

They do not say that.
They say that there is no evidence for the existence of any gods.

Answer 2

Very good point, finally a believer who can think reasonably. I myself have pondered this question many times, but this is where I drew the line and decided to become atheist. An inconclusive finding by your definition is that we don't know whether God exists or not, therefore there is no possible way to make a concrete assumption about his existence. This is where science comes into play. This inconclusive finding can be related to a theory in science that has no way of being tested as of yet, such as String Theory. But the defining line comes in the evidence. This is why scientists around the world all agree with Einstein's theory of gravity. Until Einsteins theory is proven wrong it will remain the accepted way to explain gravity. The existence of God has no evidence, therefore I must conclude that until proven otherwise there is no God.

Answer 3

You misunderstand the meaning of the words, "agnostic", and "atheist".

I, for example, am an agnostic atheist. How ya like them apples?

Agnosticism is a philosophy concerning what can be known. It says that we cannot know whether a god exists or not, and sometimes goes further to say that we will never be able to know whether a god exists or not.

Atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods.

Did it click yet? Agnosticism concerns knowledge. Atheism concerns belief. Knowledge and belief are two different things.

I admit that there's no way to know whether or not a god exists. It's possible. But there is no evidence for any such being, which makes it very improbable. I see no reason to believe until solid evidence is presented.

You can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist, but at any given moment, you either believe or you don't. It is impossible to neither believe nor disbelieve. That claim makes not the first bit of sense, and even if it did, it is not by definition agnosticism.

********** In re: added details -

Science gives us more and more natural answers to questions we previously answered with religious beliefs. It makes individual stances on certain issues more logical... i.e. accepting evolution.

However, atheism does not require acceptance of evolution. An atheist is simply one who doesn't believe in a god. From there, we vary. I am a skeptic, and my atheism is a subset of that. I require evidence for belief. That is logic, not science. Logic is what makes my position logical. Science is what gives me natural explanations for various aspects of existence.

An afterlife also has nothing to do with it. Atheists can believe in an afterlife, too... they just can't believe in a god if they call themselves atheists. No god belief - that's atheism, and that's all it is.

Answer 4

You are absolutely correct. I takes faith to be a deist or atheist. The very concept of God is unfalsifiable. Agnostic is the only logical course of action.

I could tell you about these invisible fairies that live in my backyard. You couldn't prove decisively that I was wrong. However, you could make the claim that it is very unlikely that there are invisible fairies in my backyard because we have never seen any evidence of such a phenomenon.

So I'm also agnostic as far as invisible fairies, invisible lizards that live in my wife's vagina, and invisible monsters go.

Answer 5

Science gives us a way to distinguish between good ideas and bad ideas - i.e. to show which explanation is the most consistent with observable reality. Science shows us that great complexity does not just arise spontaneously. It is inconceivable that even the simplest bacterium could exist without something being responsible for the complexity of its structure, its biochemistry and so on. It would take the lifetimes of a billion universes for it to appear spontaneously, by pure chance - in fact it is probably safe to say that it simply could never happen. This goes all the more for human beings. It's surely no coincidence that the only thing that we regard as truly intelligent - the human brain - is also the most complex thing in the known universe. Intelligence requires enormous complexity, far beyond anything that could conceivably exist without something being responsible for its existence. By the same reasoning, it's infinitely more unlikely still that an intelligent entity capable of designing and creating an entire universe and everything in it could just exist from nowhere, from nothing, without anything being responsible for its existence. Complexity, and especially the massive complexity required for intelligence, can therefore only arise from an antecedent, non-intelligent process - In the case of life on Earth, this means biological evolution, a fact which is attested to by a vast amount of real objective evidence and valid argument. So, to the extent that science allows us to reliably distinguish between plausible ideas and implausible ideas, it effectively rules out the possibility of an intelligent entity as the uncaused cause of everything that exists.

Answer 6

nonsense. Atheists - or, let's broaden it - rationalists and scientists - work by opening their eyes and looking at stuff. They don't make assumptions, and every bit of evidence is taken on its merit.

There is naff all to lead someone to theism, except ignorance, and stacks to lead in lots of far more productive directions.

If you were trying to solve a burglary, and you saw a boot print in the garden and a thread from a jumper snagged on a broken doorframe, would you then travel to Poland and arrest the nearest hamster? No, you follow the evidence. It was a human, in boots.

Postulating God has no more merit than postulating the Polish hamster. It's not case unproven, it's case irrelevant.

Answer 7

But one is not following normal standards for granting existence. Most atheists will agree that the existence of God cannot be disproven. Existence cannot be disproven. Hypothetically, anything could exist. If you argue as you do, we have to be agnostic about everything - leprechauns, unicorns, minotaurs, fairies, the flying spaghetti monster. That's just silly.

Answer 8

We have all been driven to believe in concepts and you're trying to determine why people should have to make a choice.
We don't have to make a choice because in our own minds we have already decided on that issue because this is part of the human thought pattern. Free will is part of our DNA.

Answer 9

If I know that X leads to Y, and that Y is false, I know that X is also false. This is proof by contrapositive.

If X is 'there is a deity', and there is a testable necessary consequence of that, Y, and I know that Y, the necessary consequence, is false, then I know there is no deity.

There is a necessary consequence of a theistic deity that can be shown to be false.

This leaves only deism or atheism as options.

Since atheism and deism are consequentially identical, occam's razor is sufficient principle to dispose of deism.

Atheism is compatible with scientific thinking.

Answer 10

i disagree

consider the proposition we all live in a giant computer simulation

this notion is inherently unknowable. thus we must all be agnostic to this proposition. however, does this mean that we cannot make a judgement of how likely it is?

i think your misunderstanding comes from your definition of an atheist.

no atheist i know says they know for a fact that no gods exist. just that it is extremly unlikely

Answer 11

How do you know that a God cannot be technically misproven?

If, via space travel, we discover that our existence, our concepts of gods and goddesses and fairies and demons, our universe, our psychological development, is all a pet project of an alien lifeform, then a super deity is misproven.

Or re-assigned ;-)