Do atheists have any evidence to support their beliefs?

[quatona]

What about "God does not exist" for all intents and purposes? Would a person lacking belief in God be happy with that?

They would not be addressed by it. (But maybe I didn´t understand your question...?)

 

[Ken-1122]

No ,it's pretty obvious an atheist would deny the claim they are gods.

So an atheist may agree the existence of what some call God does exist, but he just doesn't call him God. IOW in theory an atheist might even believe Yahweh, or Allah, does exist, but as doesn't believe the claims made of them thus doesn't believe they are Gods. Do you agree?

 

[Belk]

An hour and twenty minutes seems a bit long. I hope he has better arguments then claiming agnostics think no knowledge is possible and knocking down that straw man.

 

[Gene2memE]

Wow, that's a horrible collection of rampant presuppositionalism, strawmen atheists, self aggrandisement, quasi-theology and circular reasoning there. It's Sye Ten Bruggencate without his vague sliver of self-awareness. It's Intellectual Tennis Without A Net. Actually, its worse than that. It's intellectual tennis without a net, ball or an opponent.

That closing 10 minutes - ugh, that made me angry. It was fallacy heaped on fallacy - false equivalence, double meaning, personal incredulity, false dilemma, begging the question. And on and on and on.

 

[Shemjaza]

Ok, do weak atheists have evidence (or reasonable grounds) to justify their lack of belief in God?

No convincing positive evidence had been presented for his existence.

It's not helped by many believers presenting conflicting and sometimes verifiably false justification.

 

[Kylie]

You didnt answer. People have been rational only since science (ie for a couple of centuries), or not?

I never said that science was the only rational thing.

People were rational the instant that the first caveman said, "Ug was hit on head with club. Ug say Thag do it, but thag on mammoth hunt with me when Ug get hit. Thag not do it! Ug lie!"

 

[Kylie]

I was countering your assertion that a post-apocalyptic society would rediscover all the same science theories. I don't think this is true and gave my reasoning.

We would discover the water cycle again. We would discover radioactivity again, and determine that particular isotopes have the same half lives again. We would discover the rate of acceleration of an object as it falls under gravity again. We would learn how to make metal buoyant by shaping it into boats and discover how to figure out the relationship between displacement and buoyancy again. We would discover that malaria is spread by mosquitoes again. We would discover the Earth's magnetic field again. And all of these things would be the same as they are today.

It should be no surprise that only scientific observations inform science. That is the very essence of the scientific method. But scientific observations do not have a monopoly on truth. There can be plenty of observations that are not scientific (e.g. not reproducible) and correspondingly there can be true facts about the universe that cannot be obtained by scientific methods. It is interesting that some (I am not implying you are among them) declare that only truths obtained by the scientific method are indeed "real" truths, which in itself I find a curiously religious statement.

Please tell me one demonstrably true fact that is not scientific.

I don't think so - certainly not in the lifetimes of our grandchildren. How would you suggest doing this? At the very least, you would need to overcome the potential barrier between vacuum states, which would need colliders roughly 100,000,000,000 times the energy of current colliders (and that is a conservative estimate - we would need an extra factor of 1000 to reach the string scale). As I said previously, we have already looked for indirect evidence, such as domain walls, and found nothing. With no prospect of evidence, the multiverse needs to be put to bed. (And I am saying that for the benefit of science, not religion.)

Argument from incredulity.

 

[Holoman]

Please tell me one demonstrably true fact that is not scientific.

How about all of logic and mathematics. They are not verified by the scientific method.

 

[Holoman]

So an atheist may agree the existence of what some call God does exist, but he just doesn't call him God. IOW in theory an atheist might even believe Yahweh, or Allah, does exist, but as doesn't believe the claims made of them thus doesn't believe they are Gods. Do you agree?

No. Yahweh and Allah are by definition supernatural beings. To believe they exist but are not gods is nonsensical. Someone that believed in such a being but rejected all mainstream religion would be something like a deist.

 

[Kylie]

How about all of logic and mathematics. They are not verified by the scientific method.

They are the tools by which the scientific method works.

And whether logic and numbers actually exist in the universe or are just abstract concepts is a problem for philosophers.

 

[Holoman]

They are the tools by which the scientific method works.

And whether logic and numbers actually exist in the universe or are just abstract concepts is a problem for philosophers.

They don't need to exist as abstract objects. It's a fact $5 + $5 = $10. Mathematics is much more than a tool. It well predates the scientific method.

 

[Ken-1122]

No. Yahweh and Allah are by definition supernatural beings. To believe they exist but are not gods is nonsensical. Someone that believed in such a being but rejected all mainstream religion would be something like a deist.

No; there are those who believe primitive man created the concept of God's when Earth was visited by advanced beings from another planet years ago, and over the years the story evolved to them being creators of the Universe, mankind, and all that exist. The idea that Yahweh or Allah were just exaggerated stories about those advanced evolved beings from another planet is not as far fetched as you would like to believe.

 

[KCfromNC]

How about all of logic and mathematics.

Math says that parallel lines never intersect, and also says that they do. Which is the fact? Both of the contradictory statements?

Seems like a weird use of the word.

 

[Holoman]

No; there are those who believe primitive man created the concept of God's when Earth was visited by advanced beings from another planet years ago, and over the years the story evolved to them being creators of the Universe, mankind, and all that exist. The idea that Yahweh or Allah were just exaggerated stories about those advanced evolved beings from another planet is not as far fetched as you would like to believe.

More advanced beings are not gods, and those beings would not be the same ones now known as Yahweh and Allah. Even if an atheist believed that story, he would not believe in Yahweh and Allah as worshiped by billions of people today.

 

[Holoman]

Math says that parallel lines never intersect, and also says that they do. Which is the fact? Both of the contradictory statements?

Seems like a weird use of the word.

It's been many years since my Maths study but there are different types of geometry. Parallelism is an axiom of Euclidean geometry which means it's an assumption, not a conclusion. When dropped, that leads to the other weird types of geometry.

 

[Belk]

Wow, that's a horrible collection of rampant presuppositionalism, strawmen atheists, self aggrandisement, quasi-theology and circular reasoning there. It's Sye Ten Bruggencate without his vague sliver of self-awareness. It's Intellectual Tennis Without A Net. Actually, its worse than that. It's intellectual tennis without a net, ball or an opponent.

That closing 10 minutes - ugh, that made me angry. It was fallacy heaped on fallacy - false equivalence, double meaning, personal incredulity, false dilemma, begging the question. And on and on and on.

Kudos to you for suffering through it. It was more then I could take.

 

[Ken-1122]

More advanced beings are not gods,

But that will not prevent primitive men from labeling them as Gods!

and those beings would not be the same ones now known as Yahweh and Allah.

But in THEORY Yahweh and Allah could be just 2 of countless imaginary beings conjured up by mankind after witnessing advanced beings from another planet

Even if an atheist believed that story, he would not believe in Yahweh and Allah as worshiped by billions of people today.

We aren’t talking about believing IN (as far as the claims associated with) Yahweh or Allah, we’re talking about believing if they exist or not.

 

[Kylie]

They don't need to exist as abstract objects. It's a fact $5 + $5 = $10. Mathematics is much more than a tool. It well predates the scientific method.

SHow me a 5 then.

 

[cfyahoo08]

Atheism seems to lack evidence more than Christianity does. Christians have the historical gospel to point towards their truths. What do atheists have other than a blind faith that they are right? Is such blind faith morally similar to Christianity but with less evidence in support of it?

Atheism doesn't need evidence, any more than not believing in gnomes needs evidence.

But maybe you are talking about scientific beliefs often held by atheists?



Here's my evidence... the Universe:

It's not blind faith, it's sighted reason.


eudaimonia,

Mark

That goes to the prove you even exist argument, how do you know your not a figment of someone's imagination ? First you must prove your existence. Your "evidence" is falsifiable. Until we know that YOU exist or that anything exists then nothing truly exists. You could be a giant spaghetti monster in the sky.

 

[Eudaimonist]

They don't need to exist as abstract objects. It's a fact $5 + $5 = $10. Mathematics is much more than a tool. It well predates the scientific method.

Math can be studied in an abstract way (that is, without any intended practical application), but it started as a tool. Just look at all of the economic uses the Babylonians put mathematics. People found (and still find) counting and measurements useful for everyday life. Without that, it is unlikely that mathematics would have ever been invented.

I agree that math predates the scientific method, but practical uses for math predate abstract investigations of the implications of mathematical procedures.


eudaimonia,

Mark