Originally Posted by HypnoPsi
This is where I and many others have a hard time respecting materialistic atheists like Richard. Considering the amount of time and energy he puts into atheism it is, quite frankly, inexcusable for him not to understand that materialism is a faith based metaphysic.
Whether or not someone believes the Universe spontaneously self-generated or has always existed in one form or another it's still just a belief.
There is a HUGE difference between saying "The Universe just appeared" and "
We don't know how the Universe may have appeared. Not yet."
That is agnositicsm - not materialistic atheism. I have no disagreement with agnostics since they're just throwing their hands up in the air saying "Dunno! And maybe we never will!".
Materialistic atheism, however, is the active belief that physical laws alone allow for the self-generation of the Universe/s or Multiverse/s - no God/s required.
That's fine as far as it goes... until materialistic atheists confuse their faith based metaphysic with fact.
The first one is what religious people WANT scientists to be saying, because it's foolish. The second is what scientists actually say, because it's the opposite of foolish. It's truthful, and helpful, because admitting we don't know something is the first step to learning about it.
You're very close, but not quite right. Only the layman to the subject get's to say "I don't know either way" or "I don't know enough about the subject".
The scientific study of a subject is always,
always, supposed to culminate in
thesis defence. That means to
advance the arguement you believe in. (This simply involves
comparing and contrasting two (or more) ideas, defining the one you're critical of (and explaining why) and defining the one you believe in (and explaining why).)
The bottom line - if someone is unwilling to
advance the argument, from either side then they either haven't read enough about the subject to form a
scientific opinion or they're a coward.
Only laymen get to sit still. To do science you must be
advancing the argument somehow - even by thought experiments or via pure theory; ergo
thesis defence. Science is about progress and the advancement of knowledge and you just can't do that by sitting still. You have to say "Let's look in this direction, it looks good!".
Religion can't take that step, because they say "We DO already know how the univese got here, it was magic, and you BETTER NOT ask for any proof, because it is a matter of faith." That is nothing but poison. Poison to the mind, and poison to the learning process that has been responsible for every scrap of knowledge and technology that humanity has ever created.
Actually, I think you'll find the religious believe that God/s did it *somehow*, but don't know how... And all you're saying here is that, unlike materialists and parapsychologists, the religious aren't interested in investigating either physics or consciousness. So what? I disagree with them as well, but they have the right to not want to investigate.
_
HypnoPsi
