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Is your atheism predominately a science success or a theism fail?

LSSBB said:
Presupposes that they did not apply the scientific method to their beliefs, or that it was even a necessary step for them to lead a functional and fruitful life - or are you saying compatability has some other meaning?
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There simply is no way to apply the scientific method to any God claim and arrive at a positive answer. Go ahead, come up with a hypothesis for God that is unfalsifiable.
 
LSSBB said:
Presupposes that they did not apply the scientific method to their beliefs,
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The scientific method can’t be applied to paranormal beliefs other than possibly as a scientific study or test of the claims of paranormal beliefs (there's no actual credible evidence to deal with). You apparently have no idea how the scientific method even works.

LSSBB said:
or that it was even a necessary step for them to lead a functional and fruitful life - or are you saying compatability has some other meaning?
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That some scientists that are also theists can separate their paranormal religious beliefs from their empirical science work and believe they are compatible is an example of nothing but their cognitive dissonance. Certainly not an example of any form of compatibility I know of. Perhaps you conflate compatibility with emotional comfort?
 
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ynot said:
Rejecting the claims of theism requires such a low level of critical thinking I don't think I would call it "science". I rejected theism at a very young age.
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I think we are defining science differently. I run into this a lot. I define it more akin to evidence supported beliefs or conclusions and some people define it as a more formal investigation.

Not saying there is a right or wrong here, just a different POV about defining science.
 
acbytesla said:
There simply is no way to apply the scientific method to any God claim and arrive at a positive answer. Go ahead, come up with a hypothesis for God that is unfalsifiable.
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I'm reading your post two different ways, one) can one form a testable hypothesis re gods existing and two) "arrive at a positive answer" presupposes that hypothesis will be unsupportable.

Which are you stating: no hypothesis is possible or said hypothesis will always fail?

I ask a different question: what best explains god beliefs? If you ask that question instead of, do gods exist, you can indeed apply the scientific process to the evidence.
 
ynot said:
The scientific method can’t be applied to paranormal beliefs other than possibly as a scientific study or test of the claims of paranormal beliefs (there's no actual credible evidence to deal with). You apparently have no idea how the scientific method even works.
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I think we are often stuck repeating this mantra without considering maybe there is indeed another way to approach the question.


ynot said:
That some scientists that are also theists can separate their paranormal religious beliefs from their empirical science work and believe they are compatible is an example of nothing but their cognitive dissonance. Certainly not an example of any form of compatibility I know of. Perhaps you conflate compatibility with emotional comfort?
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I call it a blind spot. The same people have no issue addressing the gods they don't believe in.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm reading your post two different ways, one) can one form a testable hypothesis re gods existing and two) "arrive at a positive answer" presupposes that hypothesis will be unsupportable.

Which are you stating: no hypothesis is possible or said hypothesis will always fail?

I ask a different question: what best explains god beliefs? If you ask that question instead of, do gods exist, you can indeed apply the scientific process to the evidence.
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The first thing that is necessary when creating a valid scientific hypothesis is that the hypothesis is necessarily falsifiable. And I have never heard hypothesis for testing that a God exists that is. Usually they fail when they try to define God. Feel free Ginger to come up with one that doesn't start out with false premises or fallacies. I bet you can't. Every time I have ever heard anyone try, it's always filled with unproven assertions and special pleading.

So back to what I'm saying. It is impossible to apply the scientific method to the question AND prove or disprove it.

Unfalsifiable
 
Why would one apply the scientific method to religion any more than to what food you like to eat or when you want to poop or say please?
 
ynot said:
Theists often defend their god beliefs by attacking science with silly comments like - “Science doesn’t know everything, Science isn’t always right, Science can’t explain love”, etc. My response is usually - “So what? I’m an atheist mainly because theism has failed to convince me any god exists. Take away science and I would still be an atheist. Don’t blame science for the failure of theism”.

As I’ve never had a god belief (or any paranormal belief) I’m wondering if others are atheists predominately because of the success of science or the failure of theism.
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I’m responding to your most interesting OP before reading further. It is such a good contrast to quite a lot of posts on the GH forum to which I have replied already this morning!
There they write the sort of comments to which you refer in your first sentence. There is often mention of ‘many scientists’ who are religious too. *sigh*!!
I point out that I am an atheist because there is zero objective evidence for any God/god/spirit/whatever and of course trying to explain that there is no such thing as ‘fundamental atheism’ is an on-going theme!

I am an atheist because the God belief which was inculcated as guaranteed truth when I was a child was, after years of thinking and reading and life’s experiences, obviously an impossibility. At least that was the only faith belief taught; I did not have to wade through all the other stuff to step outside it all.

I think it is the success of science that has been the bigger influence, especially as I have always asked, ‘Is this true?’
 
acbytesla said:
No, your post is ridiculous. Love, hope, beauty, empathy, good taste etc are descriptive words for feelings or ideas. They aren't really an existential claim. Comparing that to a God claim is comparing apples to oranges.

In contrast, you claim that the Bible is the word of God and that we should follow it. For me, the mere assertion that there is a God and the bible is God's word is not enough. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and yet none has ever been provided.

The bible tells us that it is ok to own and beat slaves. That it is ok to sell our daughters into slavery and that if our daughter is raped that the rapist has to marry her. That if our bride is not a virgin on the wedding night that it is ok to kill her.

This is your book big dog.
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That is quite a concise, reasonable and logical reply.

So naturally, I assume it will be answered with laughing dog gif, "ok", winky smile gif with a smattering of unrelated and unproductive snark.
 
I grew up in an atheist family, and I read the bible, but it did not convince me that God exists. If there is a supernatural being, then why don't they appear to me and convince me of their existence, or perform some other feat that convincingly is their work?

acbytesla said:
There are supernatural phenomenons attributed to virtually every God ever invented. Whether it be Vishnu, Wotan Zeuss, Allah or Yahweh. I view it this way. If God wanted me to believe in him/her, it would know exactly what it would take to get me to believe. Why does Jesus appear to Paul and no one today?

Why do the miracles stop 2,000 years ago?
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That timescale depends on which faith you're talking about. The Jewish canon of their bible closes with the last God-inspired story written ca. 300BC. They don't even recognize Jesus as a prophet, let alone as God's only-born son.

OTOH, 600 years after Jesus, the archangel Gabriel allegedly appeared to Muhammed and dictated him the contents of the Quran, and 200 years ago allegedly another angel appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him some golden plates.
 
The Big Dog said:
There is no requirement that love, hope, beauty, empathy, good taste, hell political beliefs have evidence or verification.

Say, I love my kids.... so let’s get out the test tubes and run that through the old verification process.

How ridiculous.
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On top of acbytesla's evisceration of your argument - that you compare apples and oranges - what's so strange about that idea?

Feelings are, in the end, chemical-electrical processes in our brain. When I was a kid, I had a couple of EEGs because I suffered epilepsy - a rubber cap with a dozen or so electrodes on your head which measure brain activity. Nowadays, we also have fMRI and maybe other methods I don't know about to measure brain activity. What's silly about the idea that, in the future, we can measure them in such detail and analyze them in such a way that we can identify such emotions?
 
First I'll answer the OP.

The fundamental difference between science and religious faith to me is this:
Science assumes that nothing can be considered a fact that we as individuals cannot test with our own capacities, at least in principle.
Faith rests, ultimately, on unquestionable authority (of a book, a prophet, a high priest, a majority of society, or those of your own "visions" that you blame on some hypothetical being external to you)

My atheism rests on two pillars:
First, I never saw a good reason to accept any of the authorities that tried to convince my of Christianity; first the RC kind predominant where I grew up; second the new-born, bible literalist kind I ran into first as a young adult. I always saw all these people of other religions, all disagreeing with one another about the base facts, yet all agreeing that their divergent truths must be considered universal. Obviously, all of them failed to convince most of them, so why should I be convinced by any of them?
Secondly, applying the scientific ground rule that I get to test theories on the strength of my own reasoning capacities, theism failed at science when all of theistic discourse failed to present a testable hypothesis about "god", and consequently no evidence emerged.

Tl;dr: Theism failed at science after I accepted the primacy of science for shedding facts from fantasy.
 
The Big Dog said:
Of course theism and science are not incompatible. Heck, most of history’s greatest scientists had strong faith.

As such it seems pretty clear that atheism is the fail one.
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But these greatest scientists of faith believed in many, mutually inconsistent theistic belief systems, which shows that each of these scientists was individually prone to failure when it comes to telling fact and fantasy apart.

I am also quite convinced that all great scientists sucked at many other domains of knowledge or skill. Most excelled only in a limited number of fields of study.

It's scientists that fail in such casrs, or perhaps their science, but not atheism.
 
ynot said:
Theists often defend their god beliefs by attacking science with silly comments like - “Science doesn’t know everything, Science isn’t always right, Science can’t explain love”, etc. My response is usually - “So what? I’m an atheist mainly because theism has failed to convince me any god exists. Take away science and I would still be an atheist. Don’t blame science for the failure of theism”.
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True...

My disbelief in Yahweh and his avatar/son stem from the same place as my disbelief in Zeus, Brahma, a World-Tree with nine worlds, fish-gods inventing agriculture, or human sacrifice as fuel for the Sun...

It doesn't make sense, there's no evidence to support it and it contradicts what we do know about the World, there are numerous competing religions that also claim to be the ony true one, yet contradict all the other ones, and if we study history the hypothesis that all religions were invented by humans makes a lot more sense than the hypothesis that one of them is secretly true.
 
Beerina said:
Why would one apply the scientific method to religion any more than to what food you like to eat or when you want to poop or say please?
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I think many people would benefit greatly if they spent a few hours learning the science of passing poop, to make better informed decisions on when, where and how to poop.
Likewise with eating and social behaviour, although those are more complex. And with religions.
 
Unlike many here, I essentially “bought it” up until around age 20 or so. Why would I not? I was raised Catholic and was never exposed to anything else. The whole ball of wax, all the sacraments, first communion, confirmation, daily church-going in elementary school... Essentially non-stop Catholic inculcation.
It wasn’t until I left home to join the army that I became exposed to other ways of thinking and promptly lost interest in Catholicism.
 
ynot said:
Is one more predominant than the other? If so, which one most caused you to become or remain an atheist?
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I was raised in a Catholic family but as far back as I can remember I wasn't buying it. I can just remember thinking it made no sense at all. That would be long before I discovered or understood the proper formal application of the scientific method.

I have never had any need of or use for religion or any sort of deity. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.
 
I was raised Swedenborgian, and while there's some crazy stuff in there in many ways it's more reasonable than your average version of Christianity. So I started off arguing against things that I thought were absurd in other branches of religion while giving my own church a pass, and then that habit of being critical and evaluating religious claims eventually turned inwards.

So I guess I'd say it was a failure of theology to stand up to scrutiny. Categorize that as you will. It was a kind of slow, passive failure though; nothing bad happened, and there was no one big eye opening event. I remember my mom wanting me to be Confirmed and realizing that I couldn't honestly stand up in front of the church and say I believed all that, but even after that I did the whole deism thing.
 
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