"...I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me..." [Deuteronomy 5:8-10]

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Atheism: afaith based non-religion

I try to avoid Theologyweb. Its high-school-debate mentality and preponderance of born-again home-schoolers mean discussions there invariably come to resemble school girls scratching each other eyes out over some "High School Musical" plot point. Let's say more heat is generated than light. That, and I end up losing my temper and not wishing loving kindness and compassion on my "opponents".

Case in point, I ended up posting in a thread absurdly titled "Atheism: A faith based religion", which threw up this gem:

My point, is to show that atheism, or the belief that there is no God, is just as guilty of having "faith" in the supernatural where cosmology is concerned. That is to say, that either they must believe in a universe that is created by supernatural means (even if they believe that science will progress to a point where it is no longer supernatural, it is still supernatural now).
Did you get that? Anything science cannot explain is "supernatural". Thus it takes "faith" to believe that anything which science cannot currently explain actually does exist. Like, say, the universe and everything in it.

The guy appeared to see the vacuity of this argument eventually. Which was nice. But he had trouble with the difference between non-belief and insistent denial. As it happens, the very wonderful Cectic ran the following cartoon this week... Spooky or what?

PTET

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