[extropy-chat] Atheism in Decline

[ben]

Mike Lorrey asserted:
> Here you are arguing my point. Even if a disbelief in god, or lack of
> belief in a god, maps to reality, their lack of belief, disbelief, or
> belief in a lack of existence of god is still a matter of faith,
> specifically because of the impossibility of proving a negative.


A lack of belief is a matter of faith?

That was a mistake, right?

Unless i am an asantaclausarian. And an a-zillion-other-things-arian.

You can't possibly mean that all the things that someone has no belief
in, or no opinion on, or no knowledge of, are matters of faith, but
that's what you seem to be saying.

That can't be right. It's quite correct to say that people have 'no 
belief' in all sorts of things they have never heard of. It's not a 
matter of having faith that these things don't exist, it's completely 
involuntary.

Not ever thinking about some thing that doesn't exist and couldn't 
exist, and that nobody else has ever thought about, can hardly be a 
matter of faith.


> Some sects of Christianity rely on faith. Others do not.

Oh-oh. Now i'm confused.
Which sects of christianity do not rely on faith, then? I assume they'd 
have to be 'non-religious' ones? I've heard that there are people who 
call themselves christians, but don't believe in any gods. They just 
think that christ's purported teachings are a good idea. Stuff like "do 
as you would be done unto" (i'm not convinced that that one is such a 
good idea, actually, but that's another matter entirely).

I don't really think you could call that a religion, and anyway, if they 
don't believe in gods (assuming i'm on the right track here), doesn't 
that make them atheists or agnostics? And doesn't that mean, by your 
logic, that they 'have faith that there are no gods', or 'have faith 
that they don't really know if gods exist or not'?

Um. that last one's just silly, isn't it? Will you at least allow that 
agnostics don't have to have any faith?

ben