padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) (04/03/84)
[] David Norris: > I have explained that Atheism is as much a leap of > faith as is Theism. You have done no such thing. (1) There is no proof of the existence of God. (2) There is no proof of the non-existence of God. To adopt a point of view stating that both of these are correct and that no more can be said on the matter is Agnosticism. The Atheist holds that there is more to be said. Atheism relies on induction. Every claim is compared to similar ones (if possible), related to learned experiences, and then evaluated subject to criteria of reasonableness. These criteria may include the following considerations: (a) How fantastic is the claim? (b) Is the claim verifiable? (c) Does it contradict previously acquired knowledge? Should both (b) and (c) prove true, then conditional upon (a), a guideline from everyday life such as "The more fantastic the claim, the greater the likelihood of its being incorrect" may be invoked. For example, consider two conflicting claims about a mug of coffee: (1) the coffee is hot, and (2) the coffee is cold, and suppose that neither can be immediately verified. Experience allows for the feasibility of both claims therefore under these circumstances a neutral stance is justified. However consider now the claim that there are bug-eyed monsters in the Andromeda galaxy making contributions to Jerry Falwell. The Agnostic will not reject this, while the Atheist, on the basis of the above criteria will not hesitate to deem this as being a most unlikely state of affairs. In this context the Atheist is therefore a statistician, and is willing to say under certain circumstances "unlikely", or "probably", as opposed to "certainly", "definitely not" for the religious person, and "can't say one way or the other" for the Agnostic. The religious adopt as 100 per cent the likelihood of God's existence, the Agnostic chooses 50 per cent as his estimate, while atheists cover all other possibilities (being non-theistic, and non-agnostic). Religious dogma does not permit a probabilistic world view, and a leap of faith must be invoked in choosing the 100 per cent likelihood estimate. Now a leap of faith requires the ignoring of - and in fact the flying in the face of - experience. Therefore when an Atheist chooses a non 100 per cent and a non 50 per cent value as his estimate after careful application of criteria similar to those mentioned above, there is no way that he can be accused of taking a leap of faith. He may have an incomplete or incorrect set of criteria, he may even reach the wrong conclusion, but the act of scrutinizing the claim in the light of the information that is available to him, and incorporating that information into his decision making process protects him from accusations of invoking leaps of faith. David Norris: > On the face of absolutely no > evidence, the best you can be is an Agnostic (maybe > He is, maybe He isn't). The previous line of reasoning leads me to disagree with this statement. I conclude that it is both incorrect to (1) say that at best one must be an agnostic, and (2) adopt either extreme (100 or 0 per cent), when it comes to deciding whether God exists or not, since both invoke either the dreaded leap of faith, or the stumble of bias.