Well said!

Man I hate this argument. I can't disprove that there's a mutated mirror-being of Bob Saget floating in the universe and that every time he blinks a baby goat explodes. And also he's immune to any detection by human senses or otherwise. See? That's not provable, nor is it disprovable. However, by all human understanding and logic, I need no evidence to conclude that it's extremely improbable and quite stupid. This is how I view theism. Hell, that doesn't even contradict any established scientific theory like theistic creationism does.

What scientists can come up with based on the workings of the known universe, even mere hypotheses rooted only in speculation, will always outclass in plausibility what theism has to offer. This is because the former is based on fact. Things we know and that can be observed. The latter is based on a book, and that's all. I think we're doing a pretty bang-up job of discovering how everything came into being on our own. Between the Big Bang, the Solar Nebula, the forming of Earth and the moon and the creation of various pre-cellular theories, there's really no reason for a God to have been there; it's like an afterthought that's just there to give people the warm fuzzies.

atheism just says you don't believe in god. it has not much to do with believing in an religion. buddhism is a religion without a god for example.

being a mathematician i know that something like logic is much more relative than many non-mathematicians would probalby think.
As a scientist I know that science isn't based on facts rather than on approaches to describe something we don't understand.
Just because we think we are right does not make it right. neither religion, science or anything other. so you just can believe it's right. nothing more and nothing less.

---------------
And this will not change in eons of years if eternity or singularities are variables in our universe. it's just above the human understanding.


saying religious people don't respect any points of view because you know they are wrong causes me to lmao.

I would say the issue at hand is very much religion or non religion. I take tolerance to be a given; we're all civilised people, after all.
The problem with a lot of religious people is that they seem to think that when someone says they don't believe in the whole concept of god and religion, they are actually saying that they believe/ are sure that god doesn't exist, and then go on to assume that the two positions are equivalent.
For instance, I am quite satisfied with the explanation that science currently provides for the situation we are in. Their theories seem reasonable, they have loads of data to back them up, they make predictions based on their theories, conduct experiments and the results corroborate the theory. This seems like a reliable method of enquiry and I think it's reasonable to base one's view of the world on these theories. The idea of god is not needed at any point to explain anything; it doesn't contribute anything to the proceedings.
Religion, on the other hand, only has a few texts written by a couple of guys at a time when people didn't understand half as much about the natural world as we do now. It posits the existence of an entity that doesn't really explain anything, it just raises more questions.
Since this religious theory doesn't contribute anything to my understanding of the world, I feel justified in discarding it for now. I'm always able to come back to it later, if I'm presented with evidence that points strongly in its direction and for which no other reasonable explanation can be given.
This is because science is an open system; things are provisionally 'true', until a better theory comes along, one that does a better job at explaining the phenomena.
Religion, by contrast, is a closed system. It asks you to accept its theory for now and ever after, and never mind evidence, because 'that's not what religion is about.' In my view, this is not a reliable way to come to an understanding of the world.

To have definition of any term you have to have genus proximus and differentia specifica.God doesn´t have e genus proximus and that is reason we can not have knowlage.Does it mean God doesn´t exist or we are not capable to know it?

To latecamer

Ockham's razor doesn´t apply on that,bacause it is not same ontologycal level.

i do not know what the two latin (i think?) terms mean, but i guess they refer to our inability to see,hear,feel,touch,taste god, to which i bring back my last post on fairies

or should we take the logical step and assume since theres no proof that fairies exists that the chance of them existing is <1%

mathematician mode enabled.

the probability fairies exist is both infinite low and infinite high.

as infinity is not comprehensible for us humans you would actually really refer to a 50/50 chance of them being real.

this is btw the scientific point of view

it is neither infinitely high nor infinitely low, if the entirely neutral existance of fairies were represented on a number line as 0, then we can begin regarding traits fairies are supposed to possess (the stealing of children, and the causing of the plauge and tuberculosis) as no child has ever been verified stolen by fairies and plauge and TB have been proven to be caused by perfectly no fairy means should start to move down the number line into the negative. unless some evidence such as a plauge caused by fairies is found to push it upwards again.

infinity being incomprehensible has no bearing on fairies existance, reason and scientific study upon searching and finding no evidence to point to a fairies existance disregard it more and more as evidence points away from fairies, regardless of that by its nature we can never entirely disprove something that is a figment of the human mind.

you are incorrect, this is the philosophers point of view not the scientists,
The scientific view is to treat an unproven idea with large amounts of scepticism until something is discovered to substantiate the claims.

^^^
That may well be the essential scientific view but If I can paraphrase it as Dawkins says "the sky is blue."

Based on your example of the scientific method it may or may not be blue (or green or red). The reality is that the sky to us is blue. The reality to most people is that fairies, unicorns elves etc do not exist. I leave the next conclusion to the gallery.

The truth is that real scientific research does at least start with practical theories. Therefore your defence is a poor straw man in my view.

As for militant atheists, personally I have never had atheists knocking on my door offering me pamphlets and wanting me to share the Good News and offering to take a tithe of my salary for the privilege.

"Militant atheism" seems to me to be a complete red herring cooked up as another defence to attack Dawkins and his message by (mainly Christian) theists. An ad hominem attack in effect.

Theists are allowed to prosetylize their beliefs. Why cannot atheists prosetylize their non-beliefs?

Finally, in my view - if ever there was a non proof it is the ability of all major religons to form sects and kill each other over their interpretations.

If God is all powerful and all knowing you would have thought that it would have got the message out a bit clearer so that we poor humans could at least make sure we choose the right one.

The stakes are high, if you choose the wrong sect you may BURN for eternity. Choose the right one and you live in paradise. Tough call isn't it. Especially when choosing between being an Anglican and a Baptist let alone Shinto or Hindu. Pity my poor baby daughter who last year was born and died premature at 21 weeks. Is she in hell ? To many Christians with so called "Christian family values" according to doctrine she would be. I cannot begin to say how angry this makes me and I know not why, the arrogance, the exclusivity ? not sure, but it does make my blood boil. Actually perhaps it is the interpretation that she is denied the chance of being a person, when in fact although her life was very short, it did happen.

In my view Militant Atheism is perhaps in fact necessary to rid the world of all of the medieval superstitions and violence and let us ALL progress into the 21st century. However I would not expect any converting theists to pay for my temple of non-worship and salary

Uncle is brother of my father.

genus proximus = brother
differentia specifica =of my father

genus proximus is higher term and differentia specifica is lower.We need both of them to make any definition.In this specific topic that means we have to give definition of God with higher term wich is impossible.Does that means God not exist or we are not capable to have knowlage of him?

To latecomer

I agree with you in explanation of science as open system.But direction wich this topic take make impossible to imagine religious scientist.Is that realy truth?

I did my doctors degree in maths last year, and believe it or not this was one of one of my teachers example some years ago, except he used trolls instead of fairies.

maths and other science are based on theories and evidences and NOT on facts. We know that almost all rules in geometrics or physics are false but they do work for us althoug they can be proven wrong today, in hundred years, or never. Even if they never are proven wrong they are not right although we keep on using them.

If an old man tells about fairies or trolls and seeing them under bridges or in the forrest. This a theory were other things are based on neither right or wrong in the scientific point of view. it might be unprobable for us but that doesn't change anything about it.

science does not offer explanations for everything. that is what i learned while going to university and in research.

someone who studied biology or theology might think different but that's what i learned through maths.

that, i would argue, is merely splitting hairs on the definition of fact,facts are the accepted truth when an abundance of evidence exists in the absence of conflicting evidence,

if you boil water and put a thermometer in it will show water boiling at 100 degrees, even if you do it a million times, that is merely evidence, yet few people would say it is not a fact that water boils at 100 degrees,

it is the philosophers who would ask "well what if you did it a million and one times, it might boil at 98 degrees that last time"

if people then go back to the bridge/forest and find no troll footprints/faerie dust/troll droppings and indeed a lot of evidence that nothing had passed through there then it would widely be held that the old man had his senses impaired, and on the above number line example, hence people would rightly doubt him and the credibility of his theory would drop far below the neutral.

indeed it doesn't, but that means there is absolutely no reason to throw up our hands to a theory that all the evidence points against and indeed lacks any evidence of its own.

It is modern physics,not philosophy.Schrödinger and Heisenberg are just two maybe most known,but not only one who tolk about uncertainty principle.

There are no facts without absolute wisdom which is unable to achieve, there are just guesses.


No, that has nothing to do with philosophy. It's plain and simple calculus of probability, maths, science, no hocus-pocus.

You just can't say water will boil for sure if you heat it infinite times. You BELIEVE it will boil.

And no you can't say it boiled 20 million times at 100°C and that's why its will boil on all following tests. this is simple calculus of probability, aswell.

infinity is an infinite higher number that 20million. it's an infinite tiny part of infinity.

compared to infinity it has the same value as 0.00001 or 700 billion.

The water arguement was merely being used to demonstrate a point, that if someone can always ask "what if you did it one more time" then yes you right there are no absolute facts, i was pointing out the definition of fact as proof beyond which there is no reasonable doubt,

if you weree to test a brick to see if its alive your entire lifetime,, and someone comes along and says, "well it might be alive if you check again.." you can check the brick for life all the way up to an infinite number of times, the likelihood of you finding out that the brick is alive is still unchaged, and each time you unsuccessfully test it it pushs the negative on the metaphorical number line lower,
if you were trying to point out that we cannot get 100% on anything ever, but can get to 99.999999.. recurring to infinity then i do not see the logic in saying that cannot be regarded as probable truth, while not an absolute fact, is just splitting hairs.

99.999...% is as far away from 100% as 1% is if 100% = infinity

It took me years of study to get this. It's not easy to understand maths on this level.

the concept of infinity was not what i was saying it should approach, merely that if you were to TEST the concept an infinate number of times and 100 was the real number that would display an absolute flawless fact then each recurrance of 99.99 would be closer to 100 than its predecesser as sure as 99 is closer to 100 than 98.

if you were to try appreaching infinity than indeed it would not matter how far you go you still have infinity to keep going.

my previous post said
the number arguement was merely used to represent the arguement where 100% is definate proof,
If you use infinity as the top point that you are approaching it does not make sense as you can stick anything at that infinity point and subsequently show it as probable as not existing, even ourselves, because 0 is acheivable and infinity is not.

The real problem is atheists are reviled and looked upon as evil rapists and baby killers by 90% of the population. This further encourages a militancy in response to the discrimination.

Check this: I live in NYC, supposedly one of the most liberal and cutting-edge cities in the USA. I am an agnostic who leans towards atheism. If I mention this even around the most NON-religious Catholic around, I draw in stares and gasps of disbelief and horror. These responses are from people who are Catholic in name only and NEVER do anything religious, They have wild freaky sex, get abortions, curse constantly, sexually harass people, etc. and so on. But to dare claim to be an atheist is the equivalent of shitting on a slice of pizza before eating it. And that is how 90%+ of the American population views a non-believer. Then you wonder why atheists get so defensive? I am in fucking NYC too, not the Bible belt. People who believe in some fantasy fairy in the sky are the ones looking at me like I am nuts and trying to help me.

I am sure the situation is different in Europe and there is more tolerance, but still. In America, admitting Atheism is even worse than being a serial rapist.