Monday, July 3, 2017

Faith-based atheism?

Referencing Dawkins (The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin, 2006) Page and Navarick (Skeptic, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2017) argue that "one can not prove that something does not exist. It would have to be accepted on faith" and so if a person is 100% confident in their atheism it must be based on faith. I strongly disagree. Many people define "god" in terms of a property list like: creator of our universe, perfectly good, all knowing, all powerful, etc. etc. If I am able to prove that the components of such a list are incompatible/inconsistent with one another I CAN be 100% sure that such a thing does not exist. It is simply not a coherent concept and must be rejected. I realize, of course, that there may be different meanings of the word "god." What is required to prove or disprove the existence of "god" will depend upon what you claim god to be.

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