https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/atheism-inconsistent-science?utm_medium=Social&facebook=1&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1fKHq8UmOAEGVJHsrOrnqOMBRJBIOR89tRhudyqI6O4XLnqsDGN0-fGpE#Echobox=1555425598

"I think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It's a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. 'I don't believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don't believe.' Period. It's a declaration. But in science we don't really do declarations. We say, 'Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.' And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn't know about."

That is why I consider myself an agnostic and not an atheist. I am not smart enough to be the latter.

But the distinction depends on a precise definition of "atheist," which many on this board and elsewhere do not accept.

koriwhore Wrote:
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> "I think atheism is inconsistent with the
> scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is
> atheism? It's a statement, a categorical statement
> that expresses belief in nonbelief.

Atheism simply means that one does not believe those making a god(s) claim have provided sufficient evidence to believe. It is no different than, say, those that claim extraterrestrials abducted them. Those, like myself, that don't believe them do so because they've provided no evidence beyond their personal testimony.

And that is exactly what I meant by an alternative definition. By this definition, the Dartmouth professor's statement becomes meaningless.

This is why one cannot state as a general principle that atheism and scientific method are incompatible.

Yes. Exactly.

And there's this: "I think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method."

All that is being offered here is an opinion. It is no more valid that me saying that "I think theism is inconsistent with scientific method."

It may be, or it may not be. It's simply an opinion.

Most atheists I've talked to, including here, say atheism is simply a lack of a belief. So, atheism is not a position asserting that those making a god(s) claim have not provided sufficient evidence to believe - but simply a lack of a belief in god.

A lack of belief doesn't require a consideration of the evidence. Atheism is not disbelief. It's not a statement that I've considered the evidence and I've decided it is not true. It's simply a lack of a belief.

Talk it over with the atheists here. If you dig in, I think you'll agree with this subtle distinction.

God help me.

And the beat goes on....la de da de de, la de e da de da.

And on.

Did you notice where the statement was made and who gave him the award?

hint: it had nothing to do with science, peer review, or anything else to do with evidence and best practice

I met a physicist today. A retired physicist. You know how when you're mixed into a group to create a foursome, it's usually pretty easy to have nice conversations, usually quite benign.

So we're both retired and he asks me what I did, and I tell him. Then I politely ask what he did, and he says he's a physicist, but no longer works at a job. Which I took to mean that once a scientist, always a scientist.

As we're nearing the end of this nine-hole executive course, he somehow got the conversation onto the bible. I can't remember now how that went.

And it turned out that he is a bible literalist, a literal literalist! The earth is 6,000 years old, each day of creation was 24 hours and The Flood covered the entire earth. One of the other players mentioned Carbon 14 dating and the physicist had answers that 'demolished' the credibility of such efforts.

Then he told us a new one: Thorns & thistles and other inelegant plants did not exist before the Fall of Adam. He stated that as a fact. Next he mentioned that a fossilized thorn was found in a multi-million-year-old fossil site.

Which he took as proof positive that the site was obviously less than 6,000 years old because thorns did not exist prior to 6,000 years ago and the Fall! Case closed!

I never said a word back to him on this issue. His attitude was one of total sincerity, so what would have been the point?

Oh, UFOs and ghost sightings are all Satanic manifestations. The physicist said so.

So now while I have always been prone to popping off my personal opinions, I just couldn't see anything coming of creating push-back in this situation.

But I definitely am looking at "physicists" in a new light!

I’ve heard the “no thorns or weeds” nonsense before, but I certainly would never expect to hear it from a physicist. I wonder how he distorts his brain to deal with the fact that most observable objects in the night sky are more than 6,000 light years away (when it only took six 24 hour days to create everything).

I think we live in a world of myth. Pick your poison. Mormonism is just one drink on the adult beverage list. Science has the money, making it the new Church. New clergy, new stories. The innovation is less persistent dogmas.

I think the problem is that anti-theists call themselves atheists. That ruins the Atheist brand. Atheism doesn’t preclude teleology.

Saying you are a physicist does not actually make you one. I'd want to see this guy solve some freshman physics problems before I'd even begin to believe he was a trained physicist.

If he was trained, then he is delusional.

I have a PhD in physics. I confess that if I were to sit a freshman exam today there is zero chance I would remember all that stuff and pass. I guess that means I'm no longer a physicist. :o(

When I was in the midst of my PhD, and still a devoutly believing Mormon, I did struggle trying to answer those problems about the age of the earth, Adam & Eve, Carbon dating, etc. I thought at the time if I was a 'better' physicist I could find the answers and prove the church was true after all.

And FWIW, the thistle was the premier and most beautiful flower in the Garden of Eden. It is the national flower of Scotland after all. ;o)

Ok, I'd have trouble taking a freshman physics exam now unless it was open book and even then I'd need a few extra hours, or maybe days! But 32 ft/sec^2 means something to me, and I'd recognize the correct formula used to carbon date something to be 10,000 years old, and I know precisely why carbon 14 dating can only go back about 50,000 years.

You cannot understand radioactive decay, or even how long it would take for an earth-sized ball of molten rock to cool, and think the earth is 6,000 years old. One of the first things Newton figured out with calculus was that the earth would have to be millions of years old to have cooled to its present surface temperature. He was completely unaware of the radioactive heating of the earth's interior, which explains why it has taken not millions, but billions of years to cool to its present temperature. Even with his limited knowledge, he knew 6,000 years was absurd.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> Ok, I'd have trouble taking a freshman physics
> exam now unless it was open book and even then I'd
> need a few extra hours, or maybe days! But 32
> ft/sec^2 means something to me,

I had to think for a second what you were talking about!

Then I realised you really meant to say 9.8m/s. ;o)

Hah.

It will be interesting to hear how BoJ replies once he's put down his slide rule!

Ok, I'm old. I learned the Brit version. I figured I'd get flack and almost looked up the metric value. I do know the metric speed of light- 300,000 km/sec. love those round numbers!

Oh, and the thistle is also the symbol of Encyclopedia Britannica.

Oh, and I have a slide rule, a Swedish Odhner mechanical calculator, and an abacus, none of which ever get used, though the Odhner is a decent conversation piece



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2019 01:14PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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>
> Oh, and the thistle is also the symbol of
> Encyclopedia Britannica.

A publication from Scotland, so the thistle fits.

>
> Oh, and I have a slide rule, a Swedish Odhner
> mechanical calculator, and an abacus, none of
> which ever get used, though the Odhner is a decent
> conversation piece

I had to google the Odhner, it looks like a German WWII Enigma machine. That's a cool machine to have.

And the speed of light is 299792458 m/s. If you used the rounded up version, you must really be an engineer. ;o)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2019 01:32PM by Darren Steers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2019 01:30PM by Lot's Wife.

I looked up the Odhner. Your pocket protector must be massive!

LOL. BoJ, do you have tape holding together nerd eyeglasses with that pocket protector?

Was not the scientific method designed to change as more evidence became available?

It is my understanding that ideas and hypothesis are stated, and evidence then supports those ideas. As knowledge progresses, ideas are honed, changed, overturned, or substantiated as evidence becomes available.

At this particular point in time, I see NO evidence supporting the existence of a god-but a lot of people claiming to speak for said god.

OK, so atheists are just dishonest agnostics. They don't really know there are no gods.

Of course, by the exact same logic, theists are just dishonest agnostics.

Which means everyone is an agnostic, just some people are dishonest in claiming otherwise.

Which is a highly self-congratulatory line of reasoning if you consider yourself an agnostic. You're one of the honest ones.

If everyone is agnostic, then it is a zero-information designation. The label agnostic itself tells you nothing about the beliefs of the person. You have to determine whether the person is a nominally theist agnostic, or a nominally atheist agnostic, or a "hell if I know" agnostic. That is the exact same three categories we started out with, but with more convoluted names.

Second verse, same as the first.

Brother of Jerry, I love you.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> Second verse, same as the first.

"God is dead" is the name of the beat. We are all nihilists.

I think Bill Maher said something along the lines of “calling atheism a religion is like saying abstinence is a sex position.”

CateS Wrote:
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> I think Bill Maher said something along the lines
> of “calling atheism a religion is like saying
> abstinence is a sex position.”

Like Carl Sagan said, "An atheist would have to know a lot more than me about the Cosmos."

Like Stephen Hawking said, "When I use the word, 'God', I use it in the impersonal sense, like Einstein did, for the laws of nature. My prediction is that we will know the mind of God by the end of this Century." Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Ch. 1, Is There a God?

"M-theory, which is our best candidate for a complete unified theory, allows for a very large number of possible histories of the universe." Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Ch. 2, How Did It All Begin?

"We have a very good candidate for what Einstein called, 'The Mind of God'. The Mind of God is celestial music, resonating on strings through the 11 dimensions of hyperspace." Michio Kaku, co-author of M-theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU0I65HsM7U

I believe in Einstein's God, which is the God of order and of harmony, only one that does play dice, like Hawking's God and Kaku's God.

https://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-God-Conversations-Science-Spirit/dp/0143116770



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2019 09:45PM by koriwhore.

I don’t agree with Sagan’s statement. An atheist doesn’t have to know anything beyond that they don’t believe in a god.

I think that’s the point of the Maher quote. Many theists willfully ignore what atheists are saying about their lack of belief in their desire to categorize the way atheists think to match the way believers think.

" .. . what is atheism? It's a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in non-belief."

A belief in non-belief? Are you kidding? The word games invented by theists to discredit atheists are off the charts.

There is a world of difference between a lack of belief and categorically believing there is no god. One indicates an action and the other indicates the absence of any action--requires no effort.

I lack believe. I put no energy into it. I don't think about it, rationalize it, or make claims that I know anything.

Quite simply, I do not do anything as ridiculous as "believe in non-belief." Atheist means not a theist. It does not indicate anything else concerning belief.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Atheist means not a
> theist. It does not indicate anything else
> concerning belief.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a different take on it, here,

"It is why I don't call myself an atheist. If you look up the dictionary meaning of the word, atheist, it applies to me. But what is the definition of atheist in practice? It is what leading atheists do, their conduct, their behavior, and what they say and it's their attitude. That is what an atheist is today, because they are the most visible exemplars of that word. And most of their conduct, I either don't agree with or don't engage in."
"What don't you agree with?" Joe Rogan
"I don't debate religious people and tell them they're idiots."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2itlUlD10M



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2019 09:54PM by koriwhore.

Who and what are the “leading atheists?” And why do they get to speak for all atheists?

Do they have a secret handshake?

Devoted Exmo Wrote:
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> Do they have a secret handshake?

Or secret underwear?

If they have secret underwear, do they change them often? I have concerns..

George Washington had secret underwear.

And ill fitting suits. Plus, he wore the masonic apron in public. LOL!

It was miraculous.

Even though he's not my cousin, I think he's very favored of God. But his downfall was that he failed to name his property after himself and now no one knows his name. What a shame.

Done & Done expressed a personal point of view.

To counter his view, you name dropped. Why couldn't you have just expressed Tyson's views in your own words and left it there for the rest of us to ponder?

Can't you see how all we get out of your presentations is that you are adept at puppetry? Are you supposing that because you name drop, we can't possibly be able to resist the strength of your position?

Are you uncertain how you'd be received if you just expressed your own thoughts? Don't you value your own thoughts and conclusions?

Neil's "personal definition" is just that. Trotting out famous names like Amyjo does makes your point impotent, not strong.

Yup. It's the old "Atheism is a belief" strawman once again.
A lack of a belief does not constitute a belief.

"Anyone whom I dislike is an evil person. I dislike Neil Diamond, so he is an evil person."

Such statements are true in the limited sense that the speaker established with her arbitrary definitions. The same is true of the word "God:" if someone chooses to define it as meaning the natural world, then God is the natural world--to that person. But the usage has no validity for the vast majority of people who don't subscribe to that lexicon.

The same is true of the word "atheist." The Dartmouth scientist established his own idiosyncratic interpretation of that word and on that basis reached the conclusion that atheists are not scientific. That is true, by construction, but it has no wider validity because the normal use of the word "atheist" differs from the scientist's arbitrary definition.

I've never quite figured out what point kori is trying to make. He seems to have a problem with atheists, but I'm not sure what the problem is. Does he think theism is the only valid position? That seems both weird and wrong. Does he think agnostic is the only valid position? He just seems to whine endlessly about atheism, but I have yet to figure out to what end.

I'm an atheist. I see no evidence that a sentient being created and controls the universe. I might be wrong, or I might change my mind if I see compelling evidence. But the possibility of being wrong does not negate my being an atheist.

I don't know for sure that the sun will come up tomorrow. It may explode in the next hour and wipe out the earth. We know for a fact that stars do in fact sometimes explode. We have no particular reason to think our particular star is about to explode, still, we can't with 100% certainty rule it out. That does not make me an agnostic about sunrise. I fully know the sun will come up tomorrow (translation: my position on earth will rotate around the earth axis until it faces the sun). Yet there is a very very tiny chance I am wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2019 12:49AM by Brother Of Jerry.

Truth is in fact probabilistic. There is a 0.00000000...00001% chance that the sun won't rise tomorrow. So when we say something is true, we are saying that the probability of its being true are extremely high.

Regarding the point Kori is trying to make, I think we can dispense with theism. If anything, he is more of a deist or perhaps a pantheist although a strict definition of pantheist doesn't work either.

Perhaps he just wants to annoy people by making an argument based on non-mainstream definitions that he never bothers to explain. That is a problem because the first step in any serious discussion of anything is to define one's terms.

Exactly, BoJ and LW.

Koriwhore is just trolling Atheists again.

And agnostics!

"You're going to have to speak up. The agnostics in this room are terrible.

I would expect that joke from BoJ but not from A Theist Dave!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2019 01:19AM by Lot's Wife.

Good joke. After a reading this thread it seems like an argument over the color of Schrödinger’s cat.

That's not quite how I see atheism. "Do you believe in a god?"

"No, I don't." That makes me an atheist.

"Does a god exist?"

"I've no idea, but I doubt it."

I'm not making a statement. I don't say that god does not exist. No one actually knows the answer to that question.

It's perfectly reasonable to not believe something for which there is no evidence.

I expect that the Dartmouth scientist dismisses many things out of hand (i.e. Bigfoot, flying saucers, mermaids) without applying the scientific method to do so.

This has been hashed and re-hashed. You are getting boring KORI. Get a new topic please. It is tedious now.

HH =)

I REJECT THE LABEL OF.......(insert label here).

Lather, rinse, repeat.