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Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#11

Post by skissane »

reaperducer wrote: post #8
hota_mazi wrote: post #5

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. 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…

My understanding from theology classes a long, long time ago is as follows: - 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 perso…

I was about to say more or less the same thing. The way people define the word "atheism" has changed.

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.

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#14

Post by zaksoup »

hota_mazi wrote: post #5

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. 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…

I'm not sure I agree with you.

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!

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#15

Post by qntty »

> And by doing that, by understanding how science advances, science really becomes a deeply spiritual conversation with the mysterious, about all the things we don’t know.

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)?

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#16

Post by [deleted] »

hota_mazi wrote: post #5

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. 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…

[deleted]

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#17

Post by lisper »

> The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

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.

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#18

Post by hota_mazi »

reaperducer wrote: post #8
hota_mazi wrote: post #5

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. 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…

My understanding from theology classes a long, long time ago is as follows: - 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 perso…

Absolutely not.

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.

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#19

Post by gamblor956 »

reaperducer wrote: post #8
hota_mazi wrote: post #5

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. 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…

My understanding from theology classes a long, long time ago is as follows: - 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 perso…

The problem is that the common meaning of "atheist" has always been someone who does not believe there is a God. "Anti-theist" is a specialized term. It's sort of like the issue with "hypothesis" and "thesis" meaning different things to scientists than they do to the rest of us.

Re: Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

#20

Post by rdruxn »

hota_mazi wrote: post #5

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. 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…

> I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” 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. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that.

He seems to understand it perfectly whereas you seem to be mischaracterizing his words

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