An Agnostic Manifesto (Agnosticism)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 23:35 (5218 days ago) @ dhw

Rosenbaum considers atheism to be "as much a faith-based creed as the most orthodox of the religious variety", but George doubts if such atheists "exist in any force worth bothering about." The word "faith" seems to be anathema to many atheists, but to utterly discount the design theory, you have to believe that the mechanisms of life and heredity fashioned themselves by chance, and that requires faith in the unconscious forces of Nature to create something that still defies the conscious intelligence of our most brilliant scientists. 
>-To believe that life and heredity were fashioned by chance and natural processes does not require faith, it is apparent from the evidence. Because the exact mechanisms are not known and have not yet been reproduced synthetically is irrelevant. To suppose that there was some sort of supernatural intervention in the process is what requires faith.-> We have been discussing the origin of the universe for months, under The Big Bang and other threads ...most recently in relation to the new Shu theory and the chameleon theory. You didn't seem to have any problem understanding the terms then. What's the problem now?
>-Rosenbaum raises it as a problem in philosophy not physics.-> GEORGE: He accepts "most of the New Atheist's criticism of religious bad behavior over the centuries, and of theology itself". So that surely makes him an atheist.-Of course it doesn't. 
>-The New Atheists maintain that theology is a vacuous subject. I don't think the Abp agrees.-> the very fact that there is absolutely no consensus on the existence or non-existence of God suggests to me that reasonable certainty cannot be obtained.
>-There is pretty general consensus that Thor and Eros don't exist except as personifications of natural forces. So why can we not also come to the same conclusions about Jehovah and Vishnu?

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GPJ