27 August 2012

An Atheist's Disclaimer

The atheist sometimes appears to be 100% certain that God does not exist. This is wrong (in the majority of cases!) The atheist position is: one should not believe in things for which there is no evidence, and God is included in that category. Certainly, you must not have faith in the existence of something without evidence. The atheist upholds the principles of doubt and scepticism, where everything is up-for-grabs if alternative evidence can be provided. The atheist can theorise, hypothesise and even believe in things for which there is not 100% evidence, but they must not have unfaltering faith. For example, I believe in the multi-verse, however, I fully accept the possibility of my being wrong and am ready to be proved or disproved either way. I also believe that liberty is fundamental to human cultural and social progress along with democracy and secular humanism. I believe these strongly. The atheist position, is not one of agnosticism. The agnostic position must perceive there to be a roughly 50:50 chance of God's existence. The atheist says it is around 80-90% likely God does not exist. I am in the 90s. It seems more possible to me that there is some kind of Aristotelian first cause or prime mover, but this does not lead to any of today's religions of theism. Let it be said one more time: We do not have faith in God's non-existence. We do not have faith in science. We do not have any type of faith. We create beliefs that must be constantly subjected to doubt and scepticism.

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