[ExI] atheism

[Emlyn]

2010/1/7 *Nym* <nymphomation at gmail.com>:
> 2010/1/7 Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com>:
>> 2010/1/7 Kevin Freels <reasonerkevin at yahoo.com>:
>>>
>>> It is quite different to say "I am convinced there is no God" than it is to
>>> say "I am not convinced there is a God"
>>> There is no evidence disproving the existence of God so to believe there is
>>> no god is indeed a faith in itself.
>>
>> It is quite different to say "I am convinced there is no Flying
>> Spagetti Monster" than it is to say "I am not convinced there is a
>> Flying Spagetti Monster"
>> There is no evidence disproving the existence of the Flying Spagetti
>> Monster, so to believe there is no Flying Spagetti Monster is indeed a
>> faith in itself.
>
> I don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster is much easier to
> defend than I believe there's no Flying Spaghetti Monster. Perhaps
> christians/pastafarians are framing remarks to trap atheists into
> having to backtrack in debates? Well, the ones who can actually spell
> and construct sentences at least.
>

There is certainly a lot of abuse of the word "belief". Belief in
something or in the lack of something doesn't automatically make you
religious. There's not 100% certainty of much anything in this world,
but if I say that I believe the sun will rise tomorrow, which I do
believe and am saying, that doesn't make me equivalently irrational to
someone who says they believe in the judeo christan god. Samantha's
words were "belief regardless of evidence or argument", and largely
everyone has focussed on "evidence" and ignored "argument". There's no
evidence that the Sun will rise tomorrow (we can't know the future),
without the assumption, the belief in the argument, that the past can
be used to predict the future according to certain rules (which might
in turn rest on belief in the usefulness of the laws of logic).

It's ok to believe stuff, if you have a supportable reason to. Belief
that there is no god, much less no FSM, is supportable (occam's razor
basically) in a way that belief in any particular deity + system of
worship is not. These two uses of the word "belief" are of a different
class. Perhaps you could say "supportable belief" and "unsupportable
belief".

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related
http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting
http://emlynoregan.com - main site