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Originally Posted by Zee
Atheism is not organized to do many of the things you mention yet, but it's getting there.
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I think there's a bit of extenuating circumstances as well considering that atheism is kind of "coming out of the closet"... When a group has been marginalized and ostracized and finally starts to stand up and say it's ok to not believe, some push back and/or advocacy should be expected, if for no other reason than to let other non-believers know that they aren't alone and don't have to fear admitting their non-belief.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lobotroth
What if I was to say that I am 100% certain the St. Louis Blues will win the Stanley Cup? It's a possible outcome because they're still in the playoffs but it would be absurd for me to say that I know with absolute certainty that they will win it all. No one would ever seriously state something like that yet we have people in this thread saying that without a doubt in their mind that a God or Gods exist. Can certainty be backed up by nothing more than a belief?
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They back it up with what qualifies as knowledge to them. As Textcritic mentions, many of these live lives that are filled with personal encounters with their god and other supernatural entities or effects that fit their beliefs.
And we know from studying such things that trying to dissuade them by presenting opposing evidence to undermine what they see as their knowledge actually makes their belief stronger, not weaker.
But what qualifies as knowledge to an individual may not actually be knowledge, since we also know that cognitive biases like confirmation bias make it relatively easy to deceive the mind. And a person from religion A will give mountains of support for their belief based on personal experience (how could event A have happened without god?), but a person from religion B will give the exact same mountain of support for themselves, but the two religions are mutually exclusive.
So basically it comes down to a person's definition of knowledge I think. A gnostic theist may say they're 100% convinced because of a bunch of reasons and that constitutes knowledge, I'd argue that knowledge is what you can unambiguously demonstrate to others as being true, and no religion I've encountered yet can do that.