Some people ask, why an be Atheist? As you cannot prove or disprove the existence of God why not be an Agnostic?
The answer is that although the existence of God or a god cannot be disproven, most of the available evidence points to non-existence. Science can explain a lot that we humans could not before, and therefore looked for supernatural explanations. And science will explain and understand a lot more in the future. It looks more and more like belief is just a crutch.
A short video by Richard Dawkins explains it much better than I ever could:
Friday, August 18, 2006
Why an atheist and not an agnostic?
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I think of it this way -
ReplyDeleteTheists believe in the existence of gods and atheists don't.
A theist is someone who has belief in gods, and an atheist doesn't.
I can't prove that ALL gods do not exist, so I don't claim that all gods do not exist.
I just state that I don't believe that they exist.
It can be argued that some god concepts cannot exist. This depends on how they define their god.
For example: It is difficult to claim the existence of an all-loving god as this would appear to be inconsistent with not only the bible, but most other so called religious books.
I dunno, Alex. I've always considered absolutists on either side of the issue to be twits because it's essentially unknowable. Sure, I'd agree with the video about faeries and other mythical creatures, regardless of mythos, but these are trappings of belief systems. Dogma is unprovable or disprovable.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, there's not much philosophical difference between Genesis and the Big Bang. Something sprang out of nothing; for pure science it's not known why and for believers it's due to the machincations of God or a god. Who's right? Who knows? It's unlikely not knowable.
IMHO you have to be agnostic (pun intended) in evaluating these fundamental issues. Focusing on the dogmatic side of religion is ridiculous but very many scientists, Hawking included, start to get downright mystical when contemplating the origins of the universe.