It’s probably unfair of me to regard many atheists as being in denial. But I don’t think it’s at all unfair to think that many of them (and indeed, a great majority of all people, whatever they may or may not believe) are insufficiently rigourous in their exercise of logic and their application of semantics.
(I’d say I was a terrible snob, but that’s not true – I’m really very good at it 
)
The key point that I’m leading up to here is that the general atheist statement regarding God:
I do not believe there is a God
seems to me to be functionally equivalent to the statement:
I believe there is no God
Indeed, if I were construct these two sentences in formal logic, there would be a difference only in where the negation was placed, and not at all in the meaning.
Now, this may seem like hair-splitting, but it seems to me that an atheist does believe – they believe in the non-existence of a thing in the absence of conclusive proof in its non-existence.
That’s still a belief, as I see it. As I’ve said before here, absence of proof does not constitute a disproof. That’s why an agnostic (or at least, this agnostic) would phrase the statement as I do not know if there is a God. (One could add or not at the end, but there’s no need to – it means the same thing either way.)
Atheism often presents itself as a fearless search for truth – Greta Christina, much as I love her writing, often falls into this trap in her writings on the subject (as here, for example) – but it’s not truly fearless or searching if the truth you’re looking for is pre-determined at the outset.
To say that God cannot possibly exist, since we cannot find any proof of his existence using all the instruments of modern science is ludicrous. Science never stands still – tomorrow’s instrument will detect something that is theory today and was unsuspected yesterday. If some newly invented instrument did detect God, today’s atheists would find themselves in the position of those who denied the existence of microscopic life before the microscope proved it existed.
Of course, I don’t think it is at all likely that God will suddenly be detected tomorrow – but I cannot rule out the possibility without committing that cardinal sin of science, speculating in advance of the data. If only atheists brought the rigour of their science to their faith…
Feeds
@CentreCantHold
But the issue, as I see it, is that the onus of proof is not on the atheist to prove that there is no god, but on the believer to prove that there is a god. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
It’s somehow “disrespectful” to couch the belief in a god in these terms, but really it’s no different to, say, the belief in fairies. You wouldn’t deride someone who says “fairies don’t really exist”, would you? In the absence of any real evidence of the existence of fairies, it’s safe to assume (until such evidence presents itself) that there is no such thing as fairies.
And that’s really the way “scientific” atheism works. In scientific thinking you make certain assumptions – assumptions that are based on repeated observations. For instance, if I am dropping objects out of a window to test the effect of impact on them, I don’t spend all my time observing whether or not gravity actually pulls them towards the ground or not. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to assume, from the outset, that gravity will continue to do what it has done every single time anyone has ever dropped an object out of a window.
And so it is with god. Whilst I concede that the possibility of a god cannot be entirely discounted, it is not particularly useful, in the face of all known scientific observation, to walk around wondering if, maybe this time, god will show himself.
Saying “I believe there is no god” is, therefore, about as safe a statement as “I believe that when I drop this object out of this window, it will fall to the ground below”.
In fact more so, because I have heard of more objects flying unexpectedly back into a window, than I have heard of any real proof of god.
I don’t think I can agree that those two statements are functionally equivalent, unless there are only two possible states (believing and disbelieving).
“I do not believe in God”, or “It is not the case that I believe God exists” only excludes the possibilty of a belief in God. Any absence of belief in God’s existence, including but not limited to outright disbelief, can be described this way.
“I believe there is no God”, or “I believe that it is not the case that there is a God”, only allows for disbelief in God. It excludes belief in God and also excludes non-belief of the agnostic variety.
Different things are being denied in the two statements: in one, it’s God; in the other, it’s belief in God.
So, unless there are no options other than outright belief and outright disbelief, the two statements can be usefully used to communicate different things.
On the other hand, I certainly agree that many atheists’ blind worship of science is more than a little hypocritical (as well as often being grossly uninformed).
Loki,
I don’t know if you are being semantically rigorous enough. Before one can affirm or deny statements like “I believe in God” or “I do not know if there is a God” one must first satisfactorily define the term “God.”
Art: I would argue that, for the purposes of this argument, the actual value of God does not matter, so long as it remains a consistent value throughout the argument.
I do not believe there are witches.
Again, a question of definition – I’m sure that, for example, you believe that there are people who call themselves witches; possibly, you also believe that there are people who believe that they are witches – where do you draw the line?