[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Mike Lorrey]

--- 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.

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.

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.

> 
> Nor is either necessarily based on faith.  When Mike Lorrey states
> either one is, he's conflating belief with epistemology -- ignoring
> the
> distinction between what's believed and why it's believed.  Yes, just
> about any particular belief may be held on faith -- in the sense that
> it
> goes against logic and evidence as Tertullian put it, "I believe it
> because it's impossible."  (Note: this answers the issue of
> agnosticism.

Faith is only required in the absence of knowledge of evidence one way
or the other. To have faith and admit that your beliefs are based on
faith is to acknowledge that the objective stance is agnosticism and
that one chooses irrational behavior.

> Agnosticism is not an alternative to atheism or theism.  It, too,
> conflates the What with the Why of belief.  An agnostic either has a
> belief or lacks it.  She or he may claim that there's no valid
> epistemological method to choose between belief and its lack, but
> this doesn't mean she or he is in some middle realm between belief
> and its lack. As Georges H. Smith pointed out, each agnostic is
> either an atheist or a theist. In my own experience, agnostics have
> really been atheists who use the label to avoid a heated debate.

In my own experience, atheists are merely born again theists with a
chip on their shoulder.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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