iamheathen:

(via prologic)

Too true.

Yay! New Pat Condell video on aggressive atheism, tolerance, faith, and blasphemy.

Myth:
Science is the atheists’ religion for the modern world, like Christianity or Islam, except that it is more superstitious and less refined. Atheists’ belief in science requires faith like religion, but atheists doesn’t recognize and accept its reliance on faith.

Response:
Throughout the course of modern history, science and the scientific method have contributed substantially to the reduced scope of religious claims about the world as well as the scope of religious authority. Science has done far more to both explain the world around us and help us improve our condition than millennia of religion. It’s not surprising that some religious believers resent this and among their response is to deny that science is any different from religion.

An important aspect of this tactic is to insist that science doesn’t really provide objective knowledge about the world and that science doesn’t utilize a consistently reliable or proven method for acquiring knowledge. Instead, science is supposed to be based on guesswork, “theories,” and false beliefs which are all inferior to “true” religions, like Christianity, and their revelations from God, like the Bible.

There is a curious contradiction here because people who argue for this myth end up involved in two efforts which should be recognized as contrary: first, they have to denigrate science and argue that it really isn’t as good as defenders claims; second, they have to argue that science is actually a type of religion which relies on faith, not unlike their own religion uses faith.

Continue Reading.  (via DenyReligion’s Twitter Feed)

I enjoy Mr. Cline’s articles on About.com more and more as I read them, this example being no exception.

I’ve been increasingly considering a topic he mentions in the article as of late:

To be fair, it can be argued that a certain amount of “faith” exists with how average person accepts what science says. Few people are in a position to confirm the results of modern scientific experiments so they have to accept what others say based on their experience and authority. Unlike with religion, however, anyone can in principle confirm those experiments on their own — and the ability of others to repeat experiments to make sure they are right is one of the things which defines the scientific method.

What a fantastically succinct way of putting things.  Yes, of course there’s a matter of faith that we put into the people who perform experiments and studies since it’s unreasonable to think that everyone will repeat the actions.  However, I usually decline to use the term “faith”, since what we’re really equating the term to in this situation is “trust”.  Faith and trust are not the same thing, though since most theists have faith that their god exists and put their trust in it, the issue gets muddled.

I must also mention that it’s dangerous to bundle atheism in with science to the extent that they become so closely correlated with one another that people will automatically assume that all atheists are firm believers in whatever science decrees, and that all scientists are atheists.  Many atheists do trust science for their world view, and science is to “blame” for many people’s atheism, but that does not inherently couple the two areas.  If the two become too tightly coupled, what we’ll see is a growing assumption that atheists treat science as dogma, which is clearly not the case, and chips away at the foundation of skepticism and freethought.

There is always the argument that Christians give, “You just have to have faith”. They then throw out the following.

You have faith when you sat in that chair.

You have faith when you start your car.

You have faith you will wake up each morning.

So why don’t you have faith in god?

Well, let’s cover this argument shall we.

You have faith when you sat in that chair.

Sure, because I know it’s going to hold me. After all most of the chairs I sit in I have sat in before. So I know they will probably hold me again. But we are talking about faith in an observable, visible physical object. I can see it, test it and determine that it will probably hold me. The faith in the chair is earned based of my observations.

You have faith when you start your car.Now give me an old chair that’s a little beat up, and I will have some doubt and will sit in it with a little caution and doubt, but will also test it to be sure it will hold me. (via godisnotgreat)

There’s quite a bit more to this response, and well worth a read.

Response to: “Atheists have faith, just like theists.” (via PiroNiro)

I know, I know, lots of videos lately…

The fielding of the questions is done well, but the best part is at the very end where, upon realizing the ground he stands upon is not only infirm but actually quicksand, the Christian caller threatens Matt with a punch to his “fat head”.

For the most part, the vast majority of us do not blindly trust others without at least some proof. If I’m trying to sell you a flying car, you’ll no doubt want to take it for a test drive before buying it. We rarely take anyone’s “word” for it, because we know that blindly trusting others is a bad idea. Trust has to be earned, not given. The same should be true about what we believe, and who we chose to believe. If the methods of arriving at a conclusion are shrouded in mystery (the whole God in the gap argument comes to mind), we haven’t really gained any real knowledge, and we would be wise not to blindly trust any belief that demands the surrender of our critical faculties. Being an atheist doesn’t require me to believe in anything without evidence. Can any Christian truly make the same claim? (via iamheathen)

Thanks, iamheathen.  I continue to hammer on this same exact point.  The lack of a faith is not a faith in itself, and to deny a proposition is not the same as proposing the converse.

A word of warning: This is two hours long, and it doesn’t really pick up steam until an hour in.

It’s rather interesting, and I have to give Turek credit for being well spoken and seemingly logical with his arguments; they tend to be on the better side than I’ve previously heard.

That being said, Turek quite often misplaces the burden of proof onto Hitchens who both calls this out and/or applies Occam’s razor fairly often.  Hitchens would have done well to more directly answer the questions, since he came off as a bit vague to those unfamiliar with his arguments, but he presents them well nonetheless.  Sadly, if you’re unfamiliar with his arguments, I’m afraid he’s not going to sound like he’s making a terrible lot of sense in his responses.  Keep in mind that Hitchens holds the point that he believes that Turek is making the claim and therefore Turek is the person who needs to answer the question, and that the simplest answer to a given occurrence if often preferable.

Give it a watch if you have two hours and you really like Hitchens, otherwise skip to about an hour in and turn it off when you get bored.

Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? on Vimeo (via Vimeo)