Atheism (Agnosticism)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 15:22 (5938 days ago) @ David Warden

In his latest new thread on "The Arts" dhw begins with: "Atheism presupposes that there is nothing beyond the physical world, which is why it puts its faith in science (i.e. the study of the physical world) to explain everything." - I'd just like to respond to the implicit presumptions in this statement. I'm an atheist, but that view is a consequence of a considerable chain of thought. I do not start out by taking nonexistence of gods as an axiom. As far as possible I try not "presuppose" anything. I'm an atheist because the evidence for the existence of gods, as I have evaluated it, appears woefully inadequate. - Second dhw defines "science" as "the study of the physical world". Some people do define science in this way, but again this prejudges many issues. I prefer to regard science as the study of everything, i.e. "the world", whether "physical" or not, by whatever means are available and arguable and communicable. - Finally, to summarise dhw, he is saying "Atheism ... puts its faith in science." No it bloody well doesn't! This frankly bigoted attitude to atheists is surely something dhw should have got over by now. There are a lot of Theists who put their faith (i.,e. trust) in science, people like Ken Miller or Francis Collins or Polkinghorne for example. They evaluate the evidence differently. - I would of course argue that their reasoning is flawed, in most cases as a result of the way they have been brought up to believe in religion from a young age. But I wouldn't say something like: "Theism presupposes that there is something beyond the physical world, which is why it puts its faith in the supernatural to explain everything." !