Atheism
…is not scientific. Really the countless myths about that it is and the pseudoscientific arguments that people draw to supposedly back that up a-la Darwkins and Randi are prætentious at best, let us look into a few here:
Burden of proof: You have to prove some-thing exists not the reverse.
Very simple reductio ad absurdum: 500 years back, it wasn’t proven that Pluto existed, was that an undeniable scientific proof Pluto didn’t exist then? It wasn’t proven that America existed to Europeans is that an undeniable proof America didn’t exist then? Is this an undeniable proof any-thing outside the observable universe doesn’t exist? I’m sure you get that the argument doesn’t hold. It’s drawn out of context. All it says that if it’s not proven that some-thing exists is that it’s not proven that it exists. That does not equal a proof it doesn’t exist, until you’ve provided one. It just means the question isn’t resolved yet, what a lot of people seem to not be able to handle. The ‘I don’t know’ option, which is in all but a few cases the scientifically correct answer. Admitting you don’t have enough knowledge to make a scientifically accurate conclusion. Science isn’t out to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to every question. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is præferred when neither is proven beyond all reasonable doubt indeed. But.. biology.. it corrects itself all too often because biologists aren’t that scientific. In more serious (hard) sciences this happens not very often to never in mathematics and the lot. I can’t wait for that the holocaust actually did never happen.
By the way, about proving:
- It is possible to prove of some things they cannot be proven, this does not prove them false.
- It is possible of some things to prove that they cannot be proven false or true, this proves them independent.
Stone argument: Can God make a stone so big He cannot lift it himself?
This one concerns the Abrahamic deity mostly, as other religions don’t dabble in omnipotence all that much. One of my favourites though, not really an argument for atheism but I’ve included it. Okay, let us say we have a formal language in which we can formalise statements about the potency of an object x, P(x) is thus a certain thing that object ‘can do’. That langauge is also able to derive inconsistencies, by showing that certain potencies lead to others being unable to perform. Such as:
- P: The potency of being able to swim.
- Q. The potency of drowning every time one is in water.
Let’s just say it is provable that P -> NOT Q in this system. Let us have a certain x for which: P(x) AND Q(x). Obviously this is an inconsistency as we derived Q(x) AND NOT Q(x). Which is what you want for an omnipotent being. From a contradiction, every-thing follows. It means that every statement we can make in the language is now true. Including negations. Thus the object is ‘x’ semantically ‘omnipotent’. Does it stroke with the logic behind the laws of physic? no. But we’re talking about God, physics are no match for this guy, he’d frag pun-pun like it’s nothing. Also, it means that all objects are omnipotent but who cares.
‘All agnosts are actually really atheists.’
Completely true. Most agnosts are actually really atheists but style agnosticism because they know they have to because of all these arguments here. If you think that is an argument for atheism…
‘Atheism isn’t a faith. Is having no hair a hair colour?’
Ehh, what? This is such gibberish flawed a statement it’s pretty much equivalent to ‘Atheism isn’t a faith, can pigs fly after being eaten by Jews in the holocaust?’ it makes no sense, sorry, it’s absurd.
What a lot of people also fail to realize is that mainstream scientific notions are not inconsistent with creationism but rather so independent of them, they are however inconsistent with Young Earth Creationism, which is some-thing completely different and chiefly an Abrahamic notion. Also, contrary to what many people believe, science has no answers to the origins of life yet. They have a few ‘plausible theories’, which could have happened, but none have yet been proven to have happened. In effect postulating any of these as truth is scientifically equally flawed as some genesis-like story
Let us just take a quote from this, by the way very talentedly-Australian comedian / musician Tim Minchin:
If anyone can show me one example in the entire history of the world of a single spiritual or religious person who’s been able to show either empirically or logically existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their maul choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife… I will give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.
I’ve shown in the first argument already why this is so-so. But what’s more important is, even though he has not seen a proof of the impossibility of the task he requests, he is still willing to bet a fucking pianoforte amongst some minor things on it. It seems he’s not going by science here at all, but by his intuition, his gut-feeling. Hardly scientific of course and shows that atheists really aren’t that far from theists in this respect.