Asymmetrical Information

IMO, a good scientist cannot be an atheist. He has no hard evidence on the non-existance of the divine. Rather, to be true to his scientific creed, he must remain an agnostic, awaiting more evidence. To be more, to be certain of his atheism, requires an act of faith.

Prediction: a flamewar will ensue between self-described atheists and self-described agnostics over the definitions of the term, in which the atheists will throw complete temper tantrums over the most basic of terminology.

Prove me wrong.

Admitting the possibility of the existence of God does allow you to cop out of answering the questions Sanchez posed, but it does not require you to. Even if, for instance, you want to conclude that God chose physical constants to be what they are, you can still ask why he chose those values. As any philospher (and any marginally rigorous theologian) will tell you, divinity doesn't eliminate any metaphysical or epistemological mysteries, it just pushes the explanations back one step further. Now maybe you want to conclude that God unnecessarily complicates our explanations, but its important to note that no Deism or Theism would "solve" any of the mysteries that Sanchez presents.

As a Christian, I say "bah!" There is no ethical or theological difference between atheism and agnosticism. God judges both the same. :)

I have no proof of a giant spaghetti monster..so I don't believe in it.

Ignorance of such things doesn't mean we should cease to be atheists. Disbelief is the default state, and until there is positive evidence for a god (which such gaps in scientific knowledge definitely are not), we should keep disbelieving. Atheism requires little positive commitment regarding those unexplained gaps, so I don't see why they're incompatible.

I have no proof of a giant spaghetti monster..so I don't believe in it.

That example doesn't even pass the test of high school newspaper sophistry. It was deliberately invented by persons, of whom we know when and where, for the specific purpose of creating a tautological refutation of itself.

The fact that so many people latch onto it is mere evidence of how bankrupt the average western mind has become in regards to complex philosophical reasoning.

In economics, we do our best to avoid false-positive errors in statistical analysis. We assume what we would like to deny, and then prove it wrong. False negatives pose less of a problem for the profession.

Perhaps, though, we should treat religion like Pascal, and do our best to avoid false-negatives. Thus, Pascallian statistical agnosticism would require us to take the existence of a god as the null hypothesis. Is anyone 95% sure that there is no god? I know Jane says her p

"Ignorance of such things doesn't mean we should cease to be atheists."

If you want to avoid having faith in the non-existence of god(s), you should. Atheism is a belief there is no god(s). Agnosticism is a lack of commitment on said belief.

In my experience, the practical difference between agnostics and atheists is the level of commitment. But agnostics are more intellectually consistent.

It's impossible for "nothingness" to exist. Something must always exist, it simply requires someone to identify what THAT "nothingness" is.

As best as I can explain it, there is conjecture that the Higgs Field [The constant fluctuations of the values of force from higher values to lower values] is as close to "nothingness" as we can get at this time.

It is thought by some that in the beginning the Higgs Field stopped fluctuating and attained a 0-value; a value which was neither high nor low. At 0-value, the Higgs Field lost its ability to maintain its fluctuating quality and transformed itself into an accumulation of force(?) resulting in what is called the Big Bang: essentially creating something from "nothing". (I really don't want to get into the quantum physics/mechanics of the Big Bang).

Of course this doesn't answer the question of the existance of God or evolution. What is does, for those who grasp this scenario, is make a scientific search for God that much more daunting.

The Higgs Field is conjecture. the discovery of the Higgs Particle will possibly help develop a Higgs Field theory. These concepts are extremely difficult to grasp and visualize even for scientists. God, the creator, is several thousands (perhaps billions) of orders of magnitude beyond the Higgs Field concept; A product of His creation. Thus to prove the existance of God scientifically would require Godlike knowledge.

As a species, we've only scratched the surface of the secrets of creation and the universe. And, as a species, we are limited by our senses and perspectives. It's safe to say that Genesis is as good an explanation about the of creation and the universe as is the Higgs Field. At least Genesis explains creation in terms the non-scientific mind can comprehend.

Being and agnostic* myself , I recognize that religion is about as close to God as any of us is likely to get.

* My agnosticism is based on my inability to know of God's design purpose or plan, and I reject others who try to tell me.

At the risk of confirming predictions of a tedious semantic flamewar: By the first commenter's definition, I am not an atheist, and probably neither are the vast majority of the people who describe themselves that way. I don't imagine I can "prove" there's no God in any mathematically certain sense. I just don't think there are good reasons to believe, so I live on the assumption there isn't. And I don't understand why we draw these insanely high barriers where you need to claim apodictic certainty to be an "atheist" in the case of God, but not in other cases. While I haven't given any of these cases a whole lot of thought, I believe that there's no Loch Ness Monster, that dragons don't exist, and that Elvis is dead. It's possible I'm wrong about any one of these--we might discover one of these fantastic creatures after all. I actually regard the probability of any of these as rather higher than the probability that there's a God. Nobody insists that I'm therefore a dragon "agnostic"; we just say I disbelieve in dragons, but I know I might be wrong.

"That example doesn't even pass the test of high school newspaper sophistry."

Sure it does. The argument seems to be that the existence of mysteries we haven't explained proves the existence of god (or at least until disproven)? Why "god" and not "spaghetti monster"? Both seem to be constructs intended to explain stuff we don't yet get to me.

We've always constructed divine reationales for stuff we don't understand. The world is a big turtle with people on its back. The stars are holes in a big blanket the gods throw over the world at night. That we keep doing this and keep having our rationales refuted suggest to me we should be skeptical instead of credulous, if only for the reasons that we keep getting better answers.

"if only for the reasons that we keep getting better answers. "

Unforunately if you ask the wrong question in search for your answer you're likely to find an incorrect answer.

Why anyone believes that their notion of how a God should be if indeed He is, disproves the existence of that God when their notion is is proved to be false is beyond me.

It's like claiming, if there is a spaghetti monster, he would stop all bowls of pasta in the world from getting cold. Here is a bowl of cold pasta, therefore the spaghetti monster is false.

I would agree with the writer a few posts back that said the level of high school sophistry pretty much explains the growing disbelief in God. When the post modernists define the debate on their own terms there is little wonder why so many come up short of answers.

The biggest mystery is why religious types of all faiths insist that such things as a purpose in life beyond the biological.

What is even more mysterious is how they justify turning this search for meaning into racism and social phobias.

If there is indeed a good, the believers would truly be the first he would smite.

i think we're at a meaurable point in the aggregation of human knowledge that we can very fairly say that there likely is not a god of any kind. piggybacking on vern's comment, we have pushed the necessary role for a god back so far that the only place for one at this point might (and i stress, MIGHT) be in the seconds before the big bang. otherwise, we've mapped out plausible or proven scientific and rational explanations for all phenomena since. god didn't create all life on earth and preserve it by ordering noah to take two of everything. we know life evolved and can trace that evolution to the most primitive forms of life. we can explain the eruption of life from nothing via checical energy that can cause molecules to assemble into larger molecules and form a self-replicating DNA molecule. we can demonstrate how stars, planets, moons, gas clouds, and black holes are created. eventually, if the past is any guide, we will have the tools to excise god from all discussion. to be an atheist at this juncture of human history requires a fraction of the faith it once did. in fact to believe in any god is an exercise in blinkard faith that requires far greater strength to maintain. it's admirable, but ultinmately without proper exercise.

The amount of faith someone exercises when uttering statements about what someone named Noah thousands of years ago did or did not do amaze me.

How can you ever know by any means other than supernatural? By reading the "signs" in the fossil record?

We can't even agree on the history of the Iraq ware and that is happening right now. How can we possibly read the the history of the fossil record with such certainty? You can't. All you're doing is assigning one layer of probability upon another layer, upon another, and another. At any point many of these layers are bound to have errors and be far from all inclusive. You just can't make statements like that as a verifiable fact, because until you build a time machine you won't be able to go back and see and prove it.

You believe Noah didn't do it. I and thousands of others throughout history believe he did. Stop pretending as if your belief is more logical or intellectually more honest than mine. Your belief fits within the constructs that you've created, the web, so to speak, that you've woven and attempt to live your life by. Assigning further meaning to it as TRUTH takes just as much faith as I exercise in believing. The word faith is used for a reason. And certainly there is reason in faith.

Truth is stranger than fiction. Just take yourself out of context and read what you wrote about DNA, gas clouds, black holes, big bangs, etc. etc.

Man has always told stories to define their existence within creation. Certainly the Greeks looked for proof to verify their beliefs as does every culture with their story. Your story may be among the most recent, but it is neither complete, nor does it contain all or most truth. To proclaim that it does sure does take a lot of faith.

"When the post modernists define the debate on their own terms there is little wonder why so many come up short of answers."

Er... aren't the religious defining the debate too?

"Unforunately if you ask the wrong question in search for your answer you're likely to find an incorrect answer. "

Yup. And if you define things we don't know as divine mysteries, you will find god. The spaghetti monster works in mysterious ways. There are mysteries. Therefore there must be a spaghetti monster.

I have no proof of a giant spaghetti monster..so I don't believe in it.

That example doesn't even pass the test of high school newspaper sophistry. It was deliberately invented by persons, of whom we know when and where...

So in what way does it make an idea better that it was created by unknown persons in a time that's been forgotten? No, what you are really saying is that you believe in a particular version of God because you were told stories like that when you were too small to distinguish truth from fantasy.

As for the motivation of the inventor, religious ideas have often been promulgated in order to increase the power and wealth of the religious leader. That's a far more suspect motive than creating an analogy of an illogical argument...

the quote seems to indicate that atheism is a lot like religion, because it requires lots of faith that existing mysteries will be answered in the same way, have the same sorts of answers, as past mysteries with scientific answers. in light of all that we don't know, that seems like a lot of faith.

We can't even agree on the history of the Iraq ware and that is happening right now.

We can, however, agree on some things about the history of the Iraq war and its current state. I suggest, as the start of a short list:
1. There are American troops in Iraq.
2. They were sent there knowingly by the US administration (ie not kidnapped by Iraqis or aliens or timetravellers).
3. There is currently a lot of bombing and terrorism going on in Iraq.
4. There are big splits between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq.

There are other matters that are more debatable. However, not everything is debatable, and much that is debatable may be resolved in time as documents are declassified. Other matters may never be resolved - especially such counterfactuals as what would have happened if the US administration had not sent troops into Iraq or such internal evidence as what George Bush's motivations were. However, just because we can't agree on everything doesn't mean that there's no truth at all and that anyone's opinion is equally valid. The US administration did send troops into Iraq. We may debate its motives, we may assume secret purposes, we may argue that it was all part of a vast plot to destroy the Yellowstone National Park, but there's still some basic facts in there that are TRUE.

Fossils do exist also. The interpretation around them may be debatable, or wrong, there may be levels of probability. That there is a fossil though is not just a matter of belief.

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man." (Albert Einstein)

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." (Albert Einstein)

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

Hmmm... Albert Einstein vs. Megan McArdle. I think I'm with Einstein.

“ When I consider what marvellous things men have understood, what he has inquired into and contrived, I know only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God, and one of the most excellent.” (Galileo)

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. … This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called “Lord God” παντοκρατωρ [pantokratòr], or “Universal Ruler”. … The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect" (Sir Isaac Newton)

"Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors." (Newton)

Look around and you see ample evidence of order. Perhaps there is no ontological proof, but there is abundant cosmological evidence of a divine intelligence at work. One feels sorry for those dogamtic skeptics who cannot see what Galileo, Netwon and Einstein saw.

One can still deny the truth claims of every religion on earth, attributing them to the human imagination, and not be an atheist.

Many such would be better citizens, if the majority of believers accorded them the minimum respect they demand for themselves.

"Your story may be among the most recent, but it is neither complete, nor does it contain all or most truth."

I think it is the only "story" whose entire PREMISE is exactly that.

"We can't even agree on the history of the Iraq ware and that is happening right now. How can we possibly read the the history of the fossil record with such certainty?"

That is just koo-koo-kachew nutbar. I disagree with my roomate over whose turn it is to buy beer, therefore nothing is objectively knowable? Wha? Try that in a court of law.

"Stop pretending as if your belief is more logical or intellectually more honest than mine."

Well, it IS more based on logic, and you've suggested as much -- ie it is based on the proponderance of probability as opposed to ignoring the probable in favour of the improbable. And I'd take layer upon layer of probability over layer upon layer of improbability, no matter how comforting, any day. And aren't logic, reason and the need for proof the very antithesis of faith? If I have faith what need do I have for proof? By pursuing reason to justify my faith, haven't I denied that faith?

And it is also more intellectual (I wont take the bait on "honest"), if you consider spiritual mystical matters to be by definition deriving from something other than an intellectual process. Again, faith is faith; reason, reason.

here's something Einstein said "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is systematically being repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something in me is religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it".

I don't see that much difference between insisting on a divine being that motivates creation and the physical universe, and the need to cast blame when something goes awry. In both cases, 'Don't blame me!' is at the heart of the need for a villain/hero.

If I drop a bucket on my foot, it is not divine intervention that kept my toe from breaking, nor need it be divine retribution that the bucket hit my foot. I don't credit the Goddess with forming the bucket or causing me to obtain or drop it, or even for how well my foot heals of pain and discomfort. The world was created, I wasn't there, and the best guesses, astronomical and religious both, are quite sufficient for me to continue on my path.

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