Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
The statement made numerous times in this thread by you and others that atheists are no different than believers and that each have "faith" in their position simply isn't true.
Few, if any, atheists will state "there is no god" as a dogmatic fact. The vast majority adopt some form of the position "there is no evidence for the existence of a god, therefore the default position is to assume that one does not exist. Should compelling evidence ever become available, then my view will change."
|
No, that's absolutely true. The statement 'I believe that God does not exist' is a statement of belief, belief usually is considered a synonym of faith in my experience, and according to my thesaurus.
As for the second portion of bolded text, have you ever heard of argument from ignorance? The logical, 'default' conclusion that would follow from there being no evidence for the existence of God would be
not knowing whether or not there is a God, unless there is evidence that God does
not exist. There is no such evidence. Atheism is a statement of belief, period. One may be an atheist who says that he or she does not know whether or not God exists.
The fact is that a lot of atheists can be very abrasive and act high and mighty about them having the superior belief, like the guy I initially quoted did. The reason this shouldn't surprise anyone is because it is a belief we're talking about, and people tend to get abrasive and look down on others when beliefs enter the equation, even if they're just beliefs about, say, which movie is better than which, or whether or not Nickelback is any good.