this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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See, that's where I disagree. I'm an atheist and I don't believe or claim to know that there is no god. I don't believe that there isn't a god at all. All I believe is that there's no sufficient proof at this time that there positively is a god. Much less a god that demands certain behaviours/rituals, diets and dress codes and whatnot. You can't prove a negative after all.
I never did this, though. We're just talking as far as I'm aware, I'm not offended by your stance in the slightest, I just took your first comment as an invitation to discuss this matter.
I very much agree with you that many atheists take their belief too far. Any atheist that claims to know there is 100% certainly no god is taking their belief to dogmatic and religious belief levels. Since you can't prove a negative we'll never have proof that there's no god in the same way we'll never have proof that there's no flying spaghetti monster. I don't think the existence of a god or a flying spaghetti monster has been demonstrated sufficiently for me to adopt that belief. To me it seems an unnecessary (indeed metaphysical) invention to explain physical phenomena that have already been explained with physical evidence. And that leads me to being an atheist. For all intents and purposes there is no god until there is proof that there is. Excuse me for yet another metaphor, but I hope to explain my way of thinking better through an example: I also believe there's no dogshit under my shoe until I can smell, see or otherwise detect it. Unless that's the case I'm going to act as if my shoes are clean but that's different than me saying there's no shit under my shoe and there never will be. The former is a working hypothesis that can change depending on circumstances and the latter is holding on to a belief no matter what (religiously, one might say).
You identify as an atheist. Atheism is a group with common beliefs. There are common expressions like "You can’t prove a negative" that atheists recite similar to how religious people will cite scripture.
Many atheists will purchase books from people like Richard Dawkins. Are those books just empty pages? Nope, it's full of guidance from someone who fulfills a similar role to that of a priest in a religion.
Things like "flying spaghetti monster" is joke atheists share that's based around denigrating other religions. People who are zealous in their religion are often intolerant towards people with other beliefs.
Really atheism has all the properties of a religion. The only difference is that atheists claim that atheism is not a religion. Which is a belief, not objective fact. And there are other religions that claim not to be a religion but more of a "way of life".
The bottom line is that you've found some significance to there not being scientific proof of something metaphysical which by definition can't be proven. So significant that you take on atheist as an identity.
But it's all just your belief. Scientifically speaking, we know there are some things that can never be proven, see the Halting Problem. The beliefs of atheists are consistent with scientific thought from a century ago, beliefs that have been disproven. But like most religions old ideas are clung to despite any evidence to the contrary because your beliefs are connected to your identity. A Christian can't question the resurrection of Christ because if they did they wouldn't be a Christian. Similarly an Atheist can't question the capability of science to prove everything because then they wouldn't be an atheist.
Religion is like that, it gets you stuck in a thought pattern you can't question.
The fact that you compare rhetorical devices and scientific literature to religious beliefs is disturbing and sort of undermines your entire argument.
Science, measurements, facts, these are not a religion. There is no bullshit mysticism surrounding an empirical view of the world. Comparing such to a religion is ignorant- it may make theists feel better about their belief system, but they’re still fundamentally wrong.
To be blunt: yes, I am an atheist and yes, my view of the world is objectively more correct than a theists- because I’m not out here making shit the fuck up and expecting it to be treated with the same validity as actual, rigorous scientific thought.
Everyone thinks their beliefs are correct, otherwise they wouldn't believe in those things. You aren't any different from a religious person.
You can call what you believe in science, but you're just perverting science to suit your own beliefs, just as many religious people have done before you.
Holy shit no by definition
Believing in science inherently means your beliefs aren’t static, they evolve and change with new information. The scientific method is our tool for understanding—actually understanding—the world around us.
In that sense hell yes I’m different than a religious person
Believing in science is antithetical to the scientific method. You're meant to question things and have an open mind towards the possibility of things that haven't been discovered before. New evidence could change a theory or even completely disprove it. Or require new theories to explain it.
Atheists with their "pink unicorn" dogma have a mindset that runs counter to scientific discovery. This isn't unusual among religious people, but most religious people understand that they're making arguments on religious grounds. Atheists claim their warped view of science is science.
Also there's a difference between understanding how the world works (science) and thinking about why we exist. These are orthogonal questions which may intersect at times but are more often completely different line of thinking. But the atheist perversion of science attempts to alter theories to answer the "why" kind of questions which calcifies theories into dogma, which is bad for science. And there's a tendency among atheists to push science as anti-religion which only results in religious people becoming resistant to learning science.