Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
Surprising for someone with his background to not understand the difference between atheism and agnosticism, and obviously not understanding that these two are not mutually exclusive.
> "I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.”
That's absolutely not what atheism is.
Atheism is a single position on a single claim. The claim is "There is a god", and the position is "I don't accept that claim".
How can this be even remotely against the scientific method? It's not even a claim, let alone a hypothesis.
This person seems to be so confused about basic epistemological definitions.
- Atheist: Believes there is no God.
- Agnostic: Doesn't know/isn't sure/doesn't care if there is a God.
- Anti-theist: Is against the mere idea that there is a God.
That may have changed in the intervening decades, and with the rise of the internet, the term "atheist" seems to have changed in popular culture, often to suit a particular person's views or vocabulary. A lot of internet atheists strike me as anti-theists. But that's not a common term.
Traditionally, most people understood "atheism" to mean a positive disbelief in God – either, you are certain God doesn't exist, or at least you think the non-existence of God is significantly more likely than God's existence. People who are close to 50-50 on God's existence would call themselves "agnostics" not "atheists".
In the last few decades, there has been an increasing tendency to define "atheism" as a mere absence of positive belief in God, so that the 50-50 folks get classified as "atheists" as well.
To read Geisler's remarks charitably, I think we have to keep in mind that he is likely using the older definition of "atheism" rather than the newer one.
Theists put forth a claim: god exists. They need to prove that claim. It's not up to anyone else.
Atheism is simply looking at the evidence that has been provided for the claim. It is non-existent. Therefore it cannot be said that god exists. You need to prove the claims you put forward.
Note, it's not 50/50 (like agnosticism says). Atheism doesn't say: one side says a teapot exists out in space, and another side says it doesnt.. so it's 50/50. If there's no evidence of the teapot, there's no reason to believe it is there. That's atheism.
No, they don't. The whole point is believe without proof. It's called "faith."
Atheism is about belief, agnosticism is about knowledge.
They are complementary.
You can be atheist/agnostic, theist/agnostic, atheist/gnostic, theist/gnostic. It's a matrix.
Also there are two flavors of atheism: those that believe there is no god (a minority in my opinion, and that position requires a burden of proof).
And there are atheists who simply reject the claim that there is a god. They say there might be a god, or maybe not, but that people who claim there is a god have not presented enough evidence for that claim to be accepted.
If I look at a grass field and tell you there is an even number of blades of grass in that field, you are not going to accept my claim.
Does that mean you think that number is odd?
No. You're just saying I have not provided evidence for my claim, and therefore, you do not accept it. But you are not taking any position yourself.
That's atheism.
Atheism: belief there is no god.
Agnosticism: we don't, we can't, know whether a god exists or not.
> They say there might be a god, or maybe not,
This by definition is not atheism, it's agnosticism.
Knowledge is a subset of belief. Both are defined by different words: (a)theism is about belief, (a)gnosticism is about knowledge.
The first dictionary hit I get on atheism matches my claim:
"disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/atheism
You also seem to be strafing your dictionary claim and then ignoring anyone who shows that you’re incorrect. That’s a poor way to debate.
It's completely consistent with the scientific method.
Said to be coined around 2003: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/489221/word-for-...
By my understanding an atheist would accept the claim "there is no god"
An agnostic rejects both "there is a god" and "there is no god"
I do like the way of framing these belief systems as "what claims do you accept as true", though, I'm going to start using that to help me describe and frame my own beliefs!
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=definition+atheist&t=ffab&atb=v100...
We have to go all the way down the page, to Wikipedia, to find a link that suggests atheism is anything other than the disbelief in god.
He seems to understand it perfectly whereas you seem to be mischaracterizing his words
It isn't about there being literally proof of no god, it is about how we act in our daily setting.
The classic counter is Russell's teapot. You can't prove to me that there is not a teapot, undetectable by our current tooling (tiny, invisible, etc...), orbiting the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars.
That said, if I were to ask you "does this thing exist", you'd say "no". Sure, there is technically a chance, in the way we can't prove gravity won't suddenly stop working tomorrow, but there is no evidence for it, and no reason to act like it is there.
An atheist is not saying that there absolutely is no god, but rather "there is no reason to believe in a god, given what we currently know", which remains a different position from "I, personally, don't know" which is the argument of an agnostic.
It is true that, colloquially, we compress "there is no reason to believe that this is true" and "this is false" to the same thing, because realistically we can almost never say the second absolutely with anything outside the deep theoretical, and we fundamentally behave the same way given both.
This is not the same thing as asking if there is a god or not, which is not answerable.
The dictionary definition of atheism (Chambers, 1990)
Atheism: The belief that there is no god.
Agnostic: Someone who believes one can only know about material things and so believes that nothing can be known about the existance of God.
The author seems to be using these definitions, so it's not surprising people are confused if they've invented their own definitions.
"Belief"s are not immutable - we believe in things, but given evidence we can change those beliefs.
If I say "I believe in man-made climate change", I am not arguing that I would not change my opinion if evidence was provided that it wasn't the case.
Atheist: a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods
This is consistent with atheist writers like Dawkins.
Can you explain the theological background of Chambers, since you seem to think he's some sort of authority on the matter?
Edit: This from wikipedia on the Chambers dictionary:
The Chambers Dictionary is widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players (though it is no longer the official Scrabble dictionary). It contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions. Examples of such definitions include those for éclair ("a cake, long in shape but short in duration") and middle-aged ("between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner").[2] These jocular definitions were removed by the publisher in the 1970s, but many of them were reinstated in 1983 because of the affection in which they were held by readers.
So you're using a dictionary whose purpose is entertainment, rather than accuracy.. and insisting this is the definition we should all use? What a joke.
> Have you tried checking other dictionaries? Websters has a more accurate definition:
> Atheist: a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods
Allowing for the differences in word-form (ideology vs. adherent), those definitions are semantically identical. They just attach the negation to different parts of the sentence for the same effect (the noun in the first case, the verb in the second).
A claim was put forth: god exists. No proof was provided. Therefore atheists do not believe the claim.
This is consistent with a wide range of atheist writings and Webster's definition (but not with Chambers)
The definitions you quoted in your comment make no mention of the concept of "claim." That's easily verified with ctrl-f.
You're free to push an alternative definition that focuses on that concept, but your quote from Websters does not support you. Your definition also does not extinguish the definition you oppose, as that one clearly has some traction.
Chambers says: Atheists believe god does not exists. This is a claim: that atheists have evidence god does not exist. And that is inaccurate.
Am I? That's news to me.
What I'm actually doing is making claims about grammar, the semantic evaluation of sentences, the the potential existence of multiple valid definitions of the same word.
You're ignoring half of each of the sentences in question. Simplified: one's "belief of non-existence", the other's "non-belief of existence." They both express the same state of belief in different ways.
I understand you want the definitions to make different statements. They just don't, I'm sorry.
> They are arguing that this isn't boolean logic.
> "god_exists == false" is not the same as "god_exists != true", because "not true" can mean "false", but also "almost certainly false" and many other things.
If you want to express a concept of probability like you tried to, it's exceedingly unclear. If you want to be understood, you should make it clearer what you're trying to say.
Going back to the definitions originally quoted, the only way you find probabilities like that in them is by reading them in yourself.
We are not talking about real probability - we are talking about an unfalsifiable thing having no evidence, which is functionally the same thing as proving it false, we can't prove it false, but we act like it is, because doing otherwise would mean acting like anything insane and unfalsifiable you can think of is true.
The reason this distinction isn't clear is because no one needs to make it in the real world.
Atheists don't believe in god. This doesn't mean that - if provided proof, they wouldn't change that belief. That's how normal people use "belief" in the real world, the only way that the weird definition twisting of "Atheist" makes sense here is trying to claim "belief" has to mean unwavering absolute truth.
You can either be talking in absolute logic, and allow for "not false" to mean more than "true" because this isn't a boolean, or you can be talking in natural language where the central debate doesn't hold because no one uses belief like that. You can't pick and choose common use and holding to strict definitions.
> You can't pick and choose common use and holding to strict definitions.
I never did that.
`(god_exists == false) == (god_exists != true)`
I get that some people really want to make a distinction, and such a distinction can exist, I just don't think it's reflected in the texts that they claimed it is, especially given their context.
Also consider: in the absence of theism, the word “atheist” wouldn’t mean anything at all.
No, stating that atheists believe something is not stating that they have evidence. Evidence may support a belief, but it is not equivalent to having a belief, or required for having a belief.
It may, depending on ones epistemological viewpoint, be required for justified belief, but the claim being examined is that atheism is not merely unjustified from a scientific perspective but actually incompatible with it, which would require it to actually contradict some belief justified by science, which it absolutely, even for classic “hard atheism”, positive belief in the non-existence of God, do; you'd need an ultra-hard atheism which not only has positive belief in the non-existence of God but also does not view that belief as contingent and subject to reevaluation should new evidence arise to actually be incompatible with science—this view may exisr somewhere, but if so it is still, at best, atypical of atheists.
"god_exists == false" is not the same as "god_exists != true", because "not true" can mean "false", but also "almost certainly false" and many other things.
Definition 1 = Belief(not god)
Definition 2 = not Belief(god)1) true 2) false 3) independent
and, sort of,
4) unknown
In a parallel dimension (using the true mathematical meaning of the word dimension here) there is also, about every predicate:
1) it is theoretically possible to know 2) it is theoretically impossible to know 3) it is impossible to know if it is theoretically possible to know (thanks a LOT, Godel)
Note that in the case where it is impossible to know, there still exists an answer. There is just some reason we won't ever know the answer. If this is relevant, then of course the practical answer to your Boolean predicate is "unknown". In some cases it may be useful to pretend we know the answer, and expand math as if we know the answer.
So yes, we even have claims that we consider "true, yet impossible to know". What that means is that we add a fact we can't prove or even prove as non-problematic as an axiom (e.g. the existence of large cardinal numbers. And of course, an honest mathematician would say that since the first 3 large cardinal number axioms were proven to be disasters, odds seem pretty good the current one is a catastrophe in some currently unknown way as well. But maybe we got lucky this time)
And in yet ANOTHER dimension you have the rather important fact:
1) it is practically possible to know 2) it is not practically possible to know
Here answer 2 is pretty nice, because that provides an argument, a useful dimension where we could research into expanding our practical options to practice science. Or perhaps I should say, it gives us a very practical reason to try to make one particular expansion of our knowledge. A LOT of claims in quantum physics fall into the 2) category and there's lots of research into finding the answers anyway. And sometimes a kindergarten teacher in Italy thinks of a way to ...
So this means there are 12 possible answers to every predicate in maths. 3 basic ones. And there are many fun things that can be said about every independent claim, because then of course that predicate becomes an argument to change maths to change the answer..
So where does a claim about God fall ?
Case in point, an agnostic fits one of those, but not the other. An agnostic does not believe in a god, but they also don't believe in "not god".
If those two things are equivalent, then "not Belief(god)" and "not Belief(not god)" couldn't both be true (as they are for agnostics).
The issue is not that you need to find a way to frame it as boolean logic, the issue is that we don't believe in boolean logic. Belief has more than two states.
Of course, this is all a side track because the central point remains: believing there is no god does not require disregarding the possibility of being wrong any more than believing in anything does. It simply means you think it is the most reasonable belief given what you know at that time, as with any belief.
The OED changed from
"To deny the Gods/God" to
"To deny or disbelieve in the gods/God"
The latter - disbelieve - fits the greek, but the former was the intended meaning by those who coined it three centuries back, as a derogatory term (ref, encycolopdia Brittanicca which goes in to the history of this issue unlike Wikipedia). The OED mixes and confuses two definitions and reflects a common modern redefining, by atheists themselves, of 'atheism' to mean 'lacking belief' which dodges the problem that to positively believe there is no God or gods is clearly irrational without proof, which is thought to be logically impossible.
That's why educated atheists claim to be agnostic, and uneducated atheists claim to be atheists.
But the proof in the pudding is in how the individual expresses themselves towards religious persons, ie "The God Delusion".
Dawkins claims to be 9/10ths atheist, "technically agnostic".
But that book is a statement that religious believers are delusional, so revealing that he is in fact a true atheist. No genuine agnostic would ever make such a presumption in to minds they cannot see.
Dawkins is therefore irrational.
The irony of the situation is that :
-while a religious believer might be rational (if there were, in fact, a god, and it were proving its own existence, as they claim, as opposed to faith as "Belief without evidence" is in fact an atheist redefinition, by Bertrand Russell to be precise, now also in the dictionary).
-a true atheist is always irrational whether or not there is a god
Explain again why saying "I don't accept your claim that there is a god" is irrational?
I addressed that in what I wrote.
There's a little bit more nuance to it than that. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.
And when you talk about "weak atheism", I would argue that the distinction between that and agnosticism is fairly subtle.
Strong Atheist: There is no god, I can prove it. Weak Atheist: There is no god, there is no reason to believe there is one. Agnostic: I don't know if there is a god.
The difference is not subtle. It is the difference between having an opinion and not having one.
Strong vs Weak atheism is basically a worthless distinction to most people, because having no evidence of something means you don't believe in it in the scientific method. No, it isn't proof of the non-existence, but we still act like it doesn't exist until proven otherwise, otherwise we have to believe literally anything that you can imagine that isn't provably non-existent (back to Russel's teapot).
The author says that atheists need evidence of absence to support their claim that gods don't exist, but atheism does not entail that claim, so the author has some pretty substantial misunderstandings about how the scientific method works and what claims are going on here and when evidence is needed.
I do not need evidence in order to reject a claim that the center of the earth is made out of Earl Grey tea. I can say "I don't believe that is correct" and then just continue on with my life as it was before someone told me that with no evidence.
https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/atheism
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/atheism (2)
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/atheist
And even if an atheist holds the position that a god does not exist, based on our current evidence, this is the default null hypothesis, and this rejection of the claim that a god does exist does not require a proof. The assertion that a god exists requires proof. The author's insistence that atheists who simply default to the null hypothesis in the question of whether a god exists need to provide evidence is the one violating the scientific method.
If someone tells the author that BBQ pork sandwiches cure cancer does he just accept it as true until someone proves that they don't cure cancer?
E.g., Russell's teapot
If I am to change my position of non belief in faeries, gods, little green men, moons made of green cheese, and telepathy all it takes is a little repeatable evidence. That is not belief in their absence. When the evidence is there I will be a) very surprised b) changing my opinion.
Thats agnosticism.
Even the claim “there is no God” is preferred within the scientific method in the absence of evidence by the rule of preference for parsimonious explanation: if God is not necessary to explain anything, then God, from a scientific perspective, does not exist.
From a scientific perspective “X exists” and “X does not exist” are not symmetric claims requiring equal evidence; science starts with the assumption that only actual observations are real, and then admits only those entities necessary to the most complete and parsimonious predictive falsifiable models which withstand efforts are falsification. What is not required for those models is a non-entity to science.
And to the people who care about this, his claim about atheism is pedantic.
"I do not believe aliens abducted my dad."
Sorry, but that's a perfectly rational thing to say, in all but the most academic of circles.
In every-day life, I don't need to be so cautious as to say, "I have no evidence that aliens abducted my dad."
Drawing a distinction between those two is a waste of time, and some in the theist crowd will point to this and say, "Scientific American says denying God is inconsistent with the Scientific Method!"
This will do harm in the real world, and not any good in the academic world.
You know what else I say?
F=ma
I know about quantum mechanics and relativity, thanks.
I don't need a Scientific American article telling me, breathlessly, that "F=ma is false!"
In context, F=ma is a perfectly valid thing to say.
Imagine if Scientific American had a headline: "Earth Is Not Round". [1]
Isn't that an awful clickbait title? Does the content of the article really inform anyone who actually cares about the subject?
I'm not going to go to a GIS Conference and declare, "The world is ROUND." That would be moronic.
I'm not going to get drawn in to a discussion, "Yes, it's possible the world actually IS flat, but has only appeared to be round so far to all of the experiments I'm aware of."
F=ma. The world is round. I believe God doesn't exist.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-is-not-roun...
One is a statement of belief. The other one is not. In the context of a discussion on belief systems, it's the difference between night and day.
And he's correct: atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method, since it posits something that cannot be proven or disproven using existing scientific method.
It's not accurate for you to then say "atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method."
We're debating how many people use a term the way you want them to, and how many people use a term the way I want them to.
Hence: pedantics.
EDIT:
Try this video:
Atheism is the belief that there is no God. It's a belief, and can't be proven or disproven by known methods of experimentation or observation. Ergo, atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method in the same way that theism is inconsistent with the scientific method.
This is not to say that agnosticism is consistent with the scientific method, since agnostics merely posit that they don't know whether or not God exists. Some couch it in language like "there's no evidence" but not all agnostics base their skepticism on a reason consistent with the scientific method.
TLDR: Theists believe "God." Atheists believe "no God." Agnostics don't have a belief either way. This is not pedantry, it's a fundamental difference in belief systems.
Atheism is the absence of the belief that there is a God. “Strong” or “hard" atheism is the belief that there is no God. (Agnosticism is the belief that the existence or not of God is either unknown or unknowable, it is, in either form, compatible with theism, atheism, and strong atheism, since belief in a position is not equivalent to belief that that belief is knowledge or that the subject of that belief is knowable.)
> It's a belief, and can't be proven or disproven by known methods of experimentation or observation.
Its the absence of belief in a thing in which belief cannot be justified by science, it is not merely compatible with science but the only position possible within a scientific framework.
Strong atheism is also compatible with science. (As are both forms of agnosticism.)
Assuming God was a testable hypothesis (which it is, to all analysis to date, not even in principle), a non-contingent atheism—a nonbelief or negative belief in God immune to review based on subsequent evidence—would be inconsistent with science, but then that's an apparently counterfactual assumption and not even clearly a common form of atheism.
If I as a layman make the assertion, "I am an atheist," and a perfect scientist asks you to translate my statement into an expression compatible with the scientific method, that he could understand, you could do it.
Here, let me try: "VikingCoder is not convinced there is evidence that proves the existence of a being which created the universe."
Feel free to make your own translation, if you are dissatisfied with mine.
And if it turns out that you do not believe there's any difference between the scientifically literate explanation for agnosticism and atheism, THAT'S FINE BY ME.
I believe there is a scientifically literate explanation for atheism which differs from the scientifically literate explanation for agnosticism.
Because we're humans. We are allowed to express opinions. That doesn't mean we have abandoned the scientific method.
I'm allowed to have thought, "I believe we will find the Higgs boson."
I'm allowed to think, "I believe I will never be convinced of the existence of God."
> It's a belief, and can't be proven or disproven by known methods of experimentation or observation.
My atheism absolutely could be disproven by observation. I'd be delighted to go in to listing observations that would disprove my atheism, if you care.
(I think you probably shouldn't have used "or observation" in that statement, if you wanted to be harder on me.)
That is to say, in practical terms, consciously choosing to not believe in something is the same as not having any concept of that thing to begin with.
I wonder what he thinks of priors in Bayesian statistics.
Anyway, "belief" in the supernatural makes, as far as I can tell, no testable predictions, or where it does, those predictions have either been falsified or contradict generally accepted scientific principles. I would say that non-belief, rather than being some "affirmative assertion" like he posits, is just the null hypothesis, and that all of the onus is on believer to show a way to invalidate that null hypothesis.
He is also ignoring the distinction between "weak atheist" and "strong atheist" where the former very specifically do not make an affirmative declaration that "there is no god." Admittedly one can argue about the (apparently subtle) distinction between "weak atheist" and "agnostic" but whatever.
Me personally? I go with this point of view: I don't need a special word to signify my non-belief in Santa Claus, and likewise I don't need a special word to signify my non-belief in "god". To me, those things occupy the same conceptual category. shrug
Well our current flavour of Science is effectively materialist and it starts effectively with the assumption that 'the universe is made up of a bunch of laws' as we try to discover them. It postulates a priori a specific metaphysical position that immediately negates anything else ... so it's going to be impossible to test what has been ruled out as an assumption.
The first order problem that materialism brings us is the inherent nihilism in the 'we are just a random bag of particles problem' - i.e. taken to it's extreme, not only is there no 'supernatural' - there is effectively not even 'intelligence' or 'life' or possibly 'consciousness'. Just the appearance of those things.
So logic, reason and science, i.e. tools which we 'the observers' developed to facilitate our understanding of ourselves, has come to negate our very existence? Or is it more likely we are caught up in our own bad thinking?
It's funny that we ignore the biggest problem staring us the mirror: 'what are we' / 'what is life' - in lieu of somewhat more tangible things like 'Dark Matter' as we stare off into space, because the 'what are we' problem does not fit well into our materialist equations. In fact, speculation about 'life' may undermine just a little bit the very premise of science, in a much worse way than string theory (assuming it ends up really being actually wrong) ever will.
The headline is a little click-baitey, and Gleisers comments I don't think are much more insightful than a decent HN comment ... but I think the underlying problem is the straight jacket that materialism has imposed upon many of our best thinkers.
The argument he presents is essentially that of someone at an intellectual dead-end, as materialism seems to be on this issue.
Emergence [1] and Bio-Centrism [2] may offer us some hints at how to rethink our perspectives to accommodate for the very nature of life itself, the expression of which I think is what inspires our spiritual inquisition.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence [2] http://www.robertlanza.com/biocentrism-how-life-and-consciou...
That said, I'm open to being convinced of something else...
We are just a random bag of particles with self replicating power and the end result of billions of years of competitive self replication under limited resources (evolution). We survived entropy for long by learning to sense, make use of and adapt to the changing environment. Our fundamental internal purpose is to exist and to make more of ourselves (just another way of saying 'to exist').
We're agents learning to sense and act in a way that would maximise our future rewards, reward types which have been selected by evolution to serve self replication.
I don't see nihilism in this position, maybe there is a lack of appreciation in your position for the physical self replicator, the actual source of life.
> not only is there no 'supernatural' - there is effectively not even 'intelligence' or 'life' or possibly 'consciousness'. Just the appearance of those things.
There is, we have the ability to learn to sense and act based on our rich environment and complex brains. Our emotions encode our current rewards and the prediction of future rewards. We learn the value function and the policy function that would allow us to continue to exist and self replicate. They form what we call 'consciousness' and 'intelligence'.
", maybe there is a lack of appreciation in your position for the physical self replicator, the actual source of life"
Maybe you've misunderstood my statement.
Only from the materialist metaphysical perspective we are 'self replicating bags of atoms'.
Materialism essentially starts out with that premise, i.e. that the universe is particles that behave according to specific rules we will eventually discover. It's a premise, not a fact.
The materialist premise is exceedingly useful for many things, but in it's extreme, it's ridiculously stupid as it denies what we accept as a very rational fact: that we are alive.
In other words - because we can't explain life with physics, doesn't mean life doesn't exist, it means that physics is probably the wrong tool for the job.
The mental trap of materialism is strong, sometimes we get caught in it like a Chinese finger trap: it's deeply nihilist to propose that we, as a life forms, don't even exist, and that the words we write, the thoughts we have, essentially don't exist, or are at most only the result of random interactions.
It's also exceedingly hypocritical to live life with purpose or expression, and then somehow to have some strange belief that it is utterly random and meaningless. I think it's actually totally irrational and illogical.
There's nothing inherently more meaningful about the supernatural than the natural.
This particular bag of atoms, for instance, derives much more pleasure from acknowledging itself as such, than from deciding that it is instead some platonically ideal "being" who was created by an ideal God who always was and whose mere existence eliminates every trace of the incomprehensible, random and emergent beauty that exists in this brutally materialistic framework in one fell swoop.
...and slavery.
Honestly, that just sounds like the peace of mind of a psychopath.
I think you might be reaching for a label when you could have simply said we disagree.
Whatever metaphysical perspective might turn out to be best, I think it's beyond doubt today that we are made of atoms, the same type of atoms that form non-living objects. The self replication part is obvious as well, we can observe it happening everywhere on Earth. So I don't think my conclusion is only valid in the materialist metaphysical perspective.
My view is that self replication + selection under limited resources + adaptation (learning to act) are sufficient to explain our existence. We've understood self replication and selection since Darwin, and we understand learning based on analogy and extrapolation on current day AI. We have all the pieces to finally crack this mystery, and do that with minimal axioms (Occam's razor).
You know that for a fact, really? With billions and billions of planets in the universe, you know that for a fact?
That's a pretty rich position for someone claiming he's an agnostic, "someone who doesn't know".
> like when you have scientists—Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss among them—claiming we have solved the problem of the origin of the universe
Citation needed. These two brilliant men never thought anything remotely like that, they are/were way too humble to make this kind of claim.
> or that string theory is correct and that the final “theory of everything” is at hand
Same remark. The scientific community is pretty well aware that there are many more detractors of string theory, or the the M theory is just around the corner, than supporters. This guy is a theoretical physicist, really?
There might exist a being that defies everything we know about physical reality! But not other humans anywhere or anywhen. That's just highly improbable, not purely speculative and outside the bounds of what we understand to be reality, so I reject it as impossible.
eyeroll
On the topic of science v. religion he also says "Science does not kill God."
In my opinion this mystical thinking begs the question if he can be trusted within his field. He obviously lacks the ability to remain impartial about his religion. He's playing out a personal crisis in the open for his entire field to witness.
There's just too many things wrong with this that I can't adequately format them all for this post. I feel like I shouldn't have to teach him about things like Atheism. He should have the impartiality to learn about them, accurately, on his own before he goes around making an unsubstantiated ass out of himself.
And who is this mystical fairy-tale Templeton organization who rewards whimsical fringe scientists?
How is a "creationist scientist" (oxymoron in-and-of itself) getting an award from a creationist philanthropic organization for doing bad science to promote creationism newsworthy in the science community?
> There's just too many things wrong with this that I can't adequately format them all for this post. I feel like I shouldn't have to teach him about things like Atheism. He should have the impartiality to learn about them, accurately, on his own before he goes around making an unsubstantiated ass out of himself.
> And who is this mystical fairy-tale Templeton organization who rewards whimsical fringe scientists?
> How is a "creationist scientist" (oxymoron in-and-of itself) getting an award from a creationist philanthropic organization for doing bad science to promote creationism newsworthy in the science community?
If you'd read the article, you'd have found that Marcelo Gleiser, the recipient of the award, self-identifies as an agnostic. And a tiny amount of digging shows he's also obviously not a creationist: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/01/18/145338804/why-d....
Your comment consists of little but bomb-throwing falsehoods, and is really about a straw-man of your own invention. It's not really the kind of thing that should be posted in a flamewar-prone topic, or anywhere for that matter.
On a serious note... you could have stopped after: > "In my opinion..."
Oh dear, he should have checked out "Russell's teapot"*
"Dude the sun just disappeared! I know you still see light but it's coming from a different source entirely, that appeared so seamlessly that you didn't notice the shift!". No. No, I don't believe you. No, I don't feel compelled to check just this second. Or ever, really.
This is a common trope, but it's wrong in many cases. The absence of evidence for leprechauns/unicorns/bigfoot/etc. is in fact evidence of absence of these things. Likewise, the absence of evidence for gods is in fact evidence of absence of at least certain kinds of gods. In particular, it is evidence of the absence of gods that interact with the universe in certain meaningful ways. Evidence cannot rule out passive observer gods, like the deist deity, but that is generally not what is at issue when disputes of this sort arise.
> This is a common trope, but it's wrong in many cases.
When you're dealing with something of low intelligence or awareness, heuristically absence of evidence can be approximated as evidence of absence, if you've made so thorough a set of observations that the probability of absence can be estimated to be very high.
However, that heuristic fails when you're dealing with something with intelligence and awareness, as that thing can choose to behave differently when you're observing it vs. when you're not. Doubly so when you're dealing with something that may not even be bound by the laws that bind your observations.
Now, there are some adversarial situations where absence of evidence is only weak evidence of absence. Two examples of this are the game of hide-and-seek, and steganography. There is also the invisible pink unicorn. So you can't rule out a certain class of adversarial deity just as you cannot rule out a passive one. But again, the actual deities that are the generally the subject of dispute are not adversarial.
(This, BTW, is one of the reasons that my favorite god is Loki.)
His central point—despite the interview title, which he didn't write—is: humility. He argues that to practice science is to avoid adopting a position of certainty, but rather, to ask questions.
That almost everyone on this thread missed that point suggests maybe he's on to something.
The author doesn't understand the argument of the people they are criticizing, and so attributes a lack of humility to them based on their strawman of their argument.
Seems like this might be the central point. You may or may not be able to rationally justify atheism, but that's besides the point. If you want to do science, you have to cultivate your feeling that the world is mysterious and that there's a lot left to discover. To so that, you need to be open to a variety of interpretations of the world. Atheism might be fine for a philosopher who wants to figure out what is rationally justified, but for a scientist, you need to keep your mind open to stay creative.
For me, the best argument against atheism is that it's boring. I get to choose my attitude toward the stuff that we can never know. Why not choose the more interesting choice (i.e. agnosticism)?
Positive/strong atheism ("I believe there is no God") expresses an unproved and unprovable belief, and therefore is incompatible with the scientific method, and with agnosticism.
The above is true for any definition of God.
The original definition, and defined by those that coined it, to be positively "there is no god" was
"To deny the Gods/god". Ref Encyclopdia Brittannica which goes in to the history of this issue.
Anything else is just atheists trying to get around the logical fallacy it represents, of an unprovable assertion.
Wikipedia definitions better fit the Huxlien idea of an agnostic. The fact is that there are only three concrete states in terms of belief/certainty:
Belief that there is no god. Lack of belief in a god. Belief in a god.
And there are three words that cover these states (four if you include an impersonal god as a valid god, deist).
Atheist Agnostic Theist
Anything else is just confusing terms and definitions and causes unnecessary argument that is unhelpful to debate.
Wikipedia needs to repent.
'Incompatible' is not an accurate word here. 'Incompatible' implies that Atheism conflicts with the scientific method, which it does not. It would be more accurate to say atheism is orthogonal to the scientific method. But even that isn't true.
Saying that God exists is a claim in the positive and requires proof on your part to prove the claim, not proof on my part to disprove the claim. Anyone can make a claim about anything (pigs can fly) and we're not required to provide proof to the contrary in order to say with certainty that pigs cannot fly. Likewise, I can say, "There is no God" without having to prove that God doesn't exist.
I am sure believing in a god is even less consistent with the scientific method that atheism is.
Belief in god, on the other hand, is making a claim, and as such, can be verified by the scientific method.
It has been, actually, and belief in god is by definition disproven by the scientific method.
Odd that Hitchens and Dawkins never mention that fascinating fact that their audiences would have been fascinated to know.
Nor mention that most of Christianity never had a dogma of a literal translation of the Bible. hmmmmm...
Nor tell them that most monotheisms define their supreme beings identically, ie it's the same god. Nor that the Catholic Church, that rigid institution that will not be polite enough to die or bend, teaches that the supreme being has manifested in most other monotheisms. Indeed few of them are exclusivist as atheists like to wrongly assert.
Meanwhile, it is a fact that something in the universe has the property of 'existence'. Logically, it exists of itself and could not have ever not existed. Existing of itself, it appears to be a logical feedback loop. Which leads straight to a possibility, the grandest of feedback loops: self-awareness.
And Dawkins main objection "Who made God?" is answered since...
The real question has never been "Is there a god?", but rather "Is the fundamental thing self-aware, and if it is, does it care?".
Meanwhile, despite the objections of atheists and agnostics, especially in what they see as the otherwise incomprehensible suffering of the innocent and children, the answer has always been to ask.
Ie, "If you exist, God being, please reveal yourself, and show me why it is that the innocent must suffer".
Determining the lack of evidence of connection between religious entities and a supposed god is possible, saying a concept as ill defined as "god" does not exist doesn't even make sense to me.
Atheism is significantly driven by the rejection of religion.
The existence of a god can be discussed and indeed we do not know. However religions are backward ideologies that should really be relegated to the history books.
He may be trying to drum up some funding/interest in a book or project. This guy is unlikely to have accidentally misunderstood prominent atheists like Sam Harris.
Atheism is pure science. Its viewed a hypothesis, looked at the evidence, found it wanting and dismissed the Hypothesis. For every single claim.
The moment an Atheist finds some evidence to be even slightly compelling they become agnostic until enough evidence compels them to believe (Theist) or they discover better evidence to dismiss the previously compelling evidence (back to Atheist).
That's it.
Its incorrect to claim an atheist claims that a god doesn't exist. they just analyse and accept or reject a claim that one does exist.