What do we need a deity for? (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 03, 2011, 11:19 (4840 days ago) @ broken_cynic

Broken_cynic: I would not go so far as to say that there is no link at all between atheism and science. Philosophically that may be true, but in the real world, among real, live atheists there is a strong correlation between the two. (Not implying causation. ;) )
 
By that I meant that science gave no support to atheism (or to theism). Most of the real, live atheists I know seem to think that science does support them, but perhaps that is due to the fact that they believe in a materialistic world, and science deals with the materialistic world. However, science does not claim that the world is confined to materials. It simply gets on with the job of examining the materials. It's individual scientists who draw their subjective conclusions from the results, and some of them are actually theists. -Broken-cynic: There is a common mis-perception that agnosticism is the middle ground between theism and atheism. That's misleading. Theism is indeed the opposite of atheism, belief in god(s)/supernatural versus the lack thereof. However, agnosticism is not about belief at all. It is about knowledge. Anyone who claims to know that there is or is not a god is not agnostic, but anyone (most atheists included) who does not claim certain knowledge on the subject is agnostic. Technically I'm an agnostic atheist: I do not believe in any god(s), but I am not going to tell you I know for certain that nothing of the sort exists.-Unfortunately we are going over heavily trodden ground here, so I will keep this short. Huxley's coinage meant the impossibility of knowing whether God exists or not. Since then, epistemology has taught us that such a thing is indeed impossible to KNOW, which theoretically makes us all agnostics. However, the term has gradually come to take on a slightly different meaning, which is that of non-belief: i.e. an agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in God. It's a departure from the etymology and from Huxley, and is still frowned on by the purists, but I think you will find this is the line now followed by many agnostics, and it is certainly the line followed on this forum. You have rightly said that it is "common", but I would argue that it is now indeed the middle ground and this is no longer a misperception.
 
Broken_cynic: PZ Myers would be an example of a hard (Gnostic? =) ) atheist. In practice* I tend to side with him almost 100%, but philosophically I have to admit that I am at least a bit agnostic. I agree with him that the very idea of the supernatural is incoherent, but I will not claim certainty on the question of whether we will ever encounter anything that fulfills some of our ideas of godhood. -Only a fundamentalist would claim certainty.-Broken_cynic: I am only agnostic with regard to the general concept. I am entirely willing to state and defend the knowledge specific gods (say, Thor, FSM and Yahweh) do not exist. Their human origins are clear and their mythologies claim actions with specific, observable results that don't exist.-I shan't argue with you, but I suspect that an Orthodox Jew would, since it is so difficult to ascertain how much of the OT relates to historical fact and how much to man-made mythology. Once again, it is dangerous to talk of "knowledge". You do not "know" that the Jewish God does not exist or that, say, Joshua did not exist, or that the Jewish God did not help Joshua to settle the land of Canaan. There are, of course, limits to one's open-mindedness, although these are subjective. I would not hesitate to agree with you about Thor and the FSM!