Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I view atheism as the null hypothesis, for which you don't need any evidence. It is the de-facto stance for when there is no evidence to suggest another hypothesis.
edit: "And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about."
Is this person also agnostic when it comes to Russell's teapot? I'm pretty sure that they would make the statement that there is not in fact a teapot circling the earth, just like there is not a god in heaven. His argument about the agnostic person not being able to make a final decision is a slide into solipsism.
Something that is truly false has a 0% chance of being true, by definition.
Something that has we have proven false has an effectively 0% probability of being true -- but more specifically, it is whatever probability you assign to Descartes' evil demon being true (ie the probability of _everything_ else you know, even rules of logic and math, being false). Every non-solipsist assumes that this probability is negligibly different from 0, therefore in practice we consider "proven false" to be the same as "truly false".
If something is "undecidable", I take that to mean that we don't yet have (and may never be able to acquire) any supporting evidence to meaningfully separate it from the "proven false" case. This is just the standard behavior of assuming the null hypothesis... or colloquially: not believing something for no reason.
(there's probably some much more standard set of terminology for these ideas)
That's the point of the teapot. Technically there is equal probability of it existing or not, but that is meaningless.
Anything without evidence is equally likely to exist or not, but for some reason people only tend to take this seriously in regards to religion.
This is essentially the teapot equivalent of the big bang theory. Atheists also dispell the idea of the teapot with a hypothetical teaspoon orbiting Saturn - as we can't see it it's ridiculous to just postulate it's there, with handle and cover and stove - we have no way of proving its existence from what we observe only.
That's not to say that assuming natural processes as a principle doesn't have legs - so far Dr. Penrose's hypothesis of arbitrary scaled time convinces me most, which avoids any requirement of intelligent design, but so far there is not sufficient evidence to prove it, or any other origin theory, and as long as that is the case I think it is too quick to dispell intelligent design.
* so the universe was at one point pure energy at a scale smaller than an atom core? how did this happen?
* why did it first inflate so fast so it wouldn't fall back immediately? what happened to this inflation force after it was done?
* what is that force that accelerates expansion?
* why can't we observe most of the mass required to hold galaxies together?
* how does gravity effect the quantum world?
I'm hopeful that these can still be answered, especially since gravity may actually allow us to observe what's behind the CMB. But with such severe gaps I find intelligent design still as good an answer as any - intuitively it looks to me like a lab experiment that has been tuned to produce interesting results. If we do find answers to the above, intelligent design can probably be ruled out, but otherwise a valid hypothesis is that our universe does not make sense internally because there are external forces acting on it that come from an outside universe, potentially steered in an intelligent way.
The atheist bailey is the assertion "there is no higher being, no after life, and no spirituality", which is a scientifically indefensible stance, as the article states. It could be true, but this assertion is a religious statement of faith. Atheist discourse is largely centered here.
The motte is the statement "Belief in a higher power or the after life is not supported by empirical evidence", which is scientifically defensible.
When critics of atheism point out that any assertion about something which cannot be invalidated is non-empirical, even religious (e.g. "There is no after life" or "God does not exist in any form"), (some) atheists respond "'No God' is simply the null hypothesis! We just don't see evidence for it!" When the challenge is gone, atheists go on to write essays about how religious ideas are wrong and "There is no God" is clearly correct, and anyone who holds any doubt about this whatsoever is irrational at best.
*I tried and failed to find a link to a discussion of the metaphor and fallacy of "motte & bailey" that was both concise, correct and politically neutral; suffice to say that it is a kind of strategic ambiguity. If it's new to you, I'll just quote the relevant passage from the Slate Star Codex blog:
"[In a] medieval castle…there would be a field of desirable and economically productive land called a bailey, and a big ugly tower in the middle called the motte. If you were a medieval lord, you would do most of your economic activity in the bailey and get rich. If an enemy approached, you would retreat to the motte and rain down arrows on the enemy until they gave up and went away. Then you would go back to the bailey, which is the place you wanted to be all along.
"So the motte-and-bailey doctrine is when you make a bold, controversial statement. Then when somebody challenges you, you claim you were just making an obvious, uncontroversial statement, so you are clearly right and they are silly for challenging you. Then when the argument is over you go back to making the bold, controversial statement."
Dawkins is known as an outspoken atheist. In interviews, he has called himself an agnostic about many matters of religious faith, instead endorsing reason.[citation needed] He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design.
I think it's hard to dispute his basic point: you cannot prove a negative (or as he phrased it, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence").
I do find it kinda odd to hear those who profess to a spiritual belief ragging on those who profess a belief in the contrary though. Neither of them has evidence.