Website - Atheist FAQ
Website - Atheist FAQ
This page contains answers to some questions that I have been asked about my beliefs, especially by Christians.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 2007. I found the day meaningful (yet somewhat ironic) for declaring freedom from the belief in deities.
Because It Is Not What We See.
I also found the much of the content of the Positive Atheism website to be insightful, which led me to question the idea of calling myself a god-believer. Of particular excellence was the admonition to be consistently truthful in discussion.
That is Pascal's Wager. It is a crock. Here are some of my own reasons for thinking so.
If you say "any god will do", that doesn't work, because so many of them claim to be exclusive. If you honor one, you're annoying all the rest!
Here is another resource concerning the Wager, which even presents an "Atheist's Wager" (a much better bet!).
If your belief doesn't influence your actions at all, it is meaningless. I highly doubt that the Christian god would honor people who don't really believe in him, but then again, gods have been known to be fickle, capricious, and unfair.
Quoting from this webpage:
We detect design because of our prior knowledge of a designer. Some things look designed because they appear different from their natural surroundings, but we cannot use this to prove design.
If I find a watch in the desert, it looks unnatural; I can verify it was created if I visit the watchmaker.
The Grand Canyon, splendid as it may appear, is the result of the natural flow of the Colorado River, unless someone can discover a designer at work. Otherwise, it looks as natural as any terrain.
Since we have nothing else with which to compare the Universe (to find out if it is natural or contrived), we must remain agnostic or take its creation on faith — unless somebody coughs up a creator.
In other words, it can be argued that some see supernatural design in nature because of their beliefs acting as a lens to what they see around them.
I would also argue that evolution seems more obvious than design, when the evidence is examined. Here's an excellent resource concerning evolution questions.
No. What you believe (and what you teach your children under a certain age) is your own choice. When I have the time and energy, however, I may try to at least incrementally expand the frontiers of your understanding.
I certainly don't feel depressed about the lack of god-given meaning in my life, or even find existential questions worth worrying about.
It's rather liberating actually: instead of having meaning imposed on you from elsewhere, even though it may or may not fit the mold of your mind, you get to discover your own meaning and your own worth. It is not so much about the question "Why should I continue to exist?" as it is "How can I make the most out of the time that I have?"
I suspect that some forms of existentialist thinking may have originated as a way for dissenters to the religiosity of their day to express themselves both (1) before Darwin proposed evolution and (2) as a way to avoid persecution for their doubts after Darwin. Before Darwin, the prevailing view was argument by design — if you didn't agree with the design theory but didn't have a viable alternative, people tended to consider you a fool. Now we have a satisfactory model that need not admit supernatural influences.
A prime example of point (3) is the covering the cost of "In God We Trust" license plates in Indiana. Not only do I feel alienated every time I drive my car and frustrated by the illicit marriage of patriotism with religiosity, I also am irritated that money is being squandered to pander to those who have monotheistic beliefs, rather than putting it to practical uses like highway maintenance.
There are at least seven definitions of this word in The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48.
If you take "faith" to simply mean "reliance on testimony", sure. Most people don't get the opportunity to test and verify every single tenet that they believe in — it would be exhausting. But to say that all positions on the question involve faith (in this particular sense) would not be saying much: it is still up to the reader to act on their readings and assign them varying degrees of credibility. I could make a fairly strong argument about credibility, but that would be veering off-topic from the point I want to make.
When people say "faith" in this context, what they usually mean is
[T]he assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.
— [1913 Webster]
Thus, biblical faith would mean, "unquestioning belief in the testimony of those writers of the bible who have claim to have met god and write on his behalf."
Taking the definition of "faith" to involve some sort of unquestioning belief of what someone says, I disagree heartily with the assertion that it takes faith to disbelieve in the existence of supernatural powers. A free-thinking atheist would not take the sayings of any one person to be absolute truth; instead, they would leave open the possibility of correction, or the possibility of the existence of a theory that better fits the facts. The main difference is that this person works with the facts, rather than omitting them or distorting them. [In order to be fair, yes, there are some who believe in gods and are able to arrange their concept of god to match the facts.]
Instead of faith, it takes: (1) gumption, (2) the willingness to consider factual and verifiable physical evidence that might disrupt a belief system, and (3) unwillingness to ascribe to untestable beliefs. While that might involve a leap in understanding, it certainly isn't a "leap of faith", in the sense that the word "faith" is commonly used.
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