[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Emlyn]

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 17:55:27 -0800 (PST), Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- Technotranscendence <neptune at superlink.net> wrote:
> 
> > I'm forced to make some comments on this thread.  Atheism per se is
> > not a religion.  It's merely the lack of a belief in God/gods.
> That's
> > it. Ditto for theism.  Theism is not a religion either.  It's merely
> a
> > presence of a belief in God/gods.
> 
> "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Atheism is as much a
> matter of faith as theism. Particularly, since the advent of the
> Simulation Argument, the issue demands that scientists intending on
> total scientific objectivity must be agnostic or at most Deist, until
> the Simulation Argument is proven or disproven. The Simulation Argument
> essentially dictates that the inhabitants of most universes must be
> deists to be objective.

Where do you stand on Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, Mike? Agnostic?

The Simulation is interesting theoretically, but I wouldn't be hanging
my hat on it. Like the Drake equation, its outcome is based on the
axioms you choose. Based on available knowledge, it's as credible as
the Doomsday argument (ie: not very)

> 
> The hubris of religion is not to presume something which is not in
> evidence, but to presume something in spite of evidence or odds to the
> contrary (i.e. evolution, jupiters moons, etc).
> 
> Atheism falls in this same trap of hubris in presuming that absence of
> evidence is evidence of absence, but especially in going beyond that
> presumption in insisting, despite the Simulation Argument's
> demonstration of odds to the contrary, that we exist in the one rare
> universe that was not created by anybody. Eliezer's bayesian games of
> the past months (of colored balls in bags) should be conclusive in
> proving that presumptions of atheists are at least as specious of those
> of theists.

Nope. None of us would be able to list all the theorems in which we
have no belief, because the space is infinite (unlike the space of
theorems in which we have faith, which must be finite). The existence
of a boss deity is just another theorem in which some of us have no
faith (like the theorem that Santa Claus exists).

> 
> I am an agnostic because I don't know which sort of universe I live in,
> yet, but I lean to the Deist view because the odds tell me to.
> 

Sometimes I call myself an agnostic, in the spirit of Huxley, who
meant not that he wasn't sure, but that one could not possibly know a
god that revealed itself only via mysticism because mysticism is bunk.
It comes from the word gnosis, which means roughly "inner knowledge",
or mystically received knowledge. The original meaning of agnostic is
that it is not possible to know of god. The meaning of the word these
days has changed to mean you are a fence sitter, but that's a
corruption of the word (as misunderstood by the mentally
underequipped, imo).

The Agnosticism of Sir Thomas Huxley is what is usually nowadays meant
by intelligent Atheists (as opposed to those who have come to atheism
as a reaction against their religious upbringing, and who might as
well have become satanists, because their atheism is a rebellious
faith in the opposite of what they think they are supposed to
believe).

So when I call myself an Atheist, as I usually do, it is partly in the
spirit of Huxley's agnosticism. Firstly, I have no belief in god.
Secondly, I think that you cannot logically know a god that does not
reveal itself via material action (ie: requires gnosis, which is bunk,
cf pretty much all of modern psychology). Thirdly, if a material God
turned up (you know, the guy with a white beard, hurling lightning
bolts, plagues, death of the firstborns, etc), I'd be an idiot to not
believe in him. God would be a strong word though; I would only class
him as a superpowerful being who it might be prudent to obey if he
required it; I think the whole "infinite love and mercy" stuff, and
the Christian thoughtcrime business is something I'd never accept.

But I don't reserve judgement on the question of God. I am prepared to
say outright that there is absolutely no evidence for any kind of God,
and give him the old Occam's Razor heave-ho.

-- 
Emlyn

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