Hacker News Reader

I grew up studying in a catholic school. Once a teacher that was involved with the convent, teaching us some logic basics, gave us some copies from the chapter 2 of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World as a recommended lecture. Could get the whole book and read it and ended becoming an atheist.

View on HN

Atheist or hard agnostic?

Agnostic as in “I haven’t had an experience to suggest there is a God”.

Atheist as in “my faith-based initiative is to totally believe there isn’t a God”.

To respond to this distinction and stay on topic, a book I'd recommend is Atheism: The Case against god by George H Smith.

Atheism is not generally faith-based. That's kind of the whole point.

Yes it is, you believe there isn’t a God if you’re an atheist. At this time there isn’t a way to prove there isn’t a God.

Proof of absence is not required for lack of belief, and lack of belief in any god makes me an atheist [1]. There's nothing faith-based about it.

There are millions of other things I don't believe in too; it's the default position in many cases.

[1] That's the definition: "a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods" - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheist

I'd argue that it is still a statement of faith.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com