"Everyone, atheists included, can benefit from meeting people with different beliefs — or lack of beliefs" concluded a recent NPR story on atheist displays in a San Diego park.
Why is atheism always framed as a "lack of beliefs" (or sometimes a "lack of faith"). A scientist who conducts an experiment and has a negative result (such as finding Drug X is no more effective than placebo at treating Y) does not lack faith; she simply has ruled out one more hypothesis in which to place her faith, thereby honing in on those that are more worthy. We don't define modern physicians by what they don't believe in (as "those who lack faith in humoral theory" for example).
And only in religion would anyone claim that the failure to prove that Drug X is effective must mean therefore that Drug Z21753912789a4361.2 Version 4 MUST by default be effective (and the only drug that is effective). Nonsense.
The default hypothesis in science is the null hypothesis, the idea that something does not work or is no more effective than placebo. (As Karl Popper made depressingly clear, scientists never prove anything, only fail to disprove it.) Why is it that the default hypothesis for so many in Europe and the United States is that god is a single Jewish male with a strikingly Northern European visage in a toga floating in the clouds who visited Palestine about 2,000 years ago and hasn't been seen since? It's such an extraordinary, bizarre claim or set of claims. Of course, this does not mean the claims are incorrect - the fact that light is both a particle and a wave is pretty weird but turns out to be true, as best as we can tell - only that they should not be the DEFAULT, the go to explanation if other explanations cannot be proven, as though this explanation was itself proven.
Technically, there are no atheists (agnostics is the more scientifically correct term) anymore than there are scientists who have successfully proven that a drug works. But this is a very narrow, philosophical distinction that is unhelpful on a day-to-day basis. I cannot prove that my seat belt will save my life on any given trip, but you damn well better believe I buckle up. So although no one will ever be able to disprove - in a Popperian sense - all of the god hypotheses that societies have generated, it is fairly easy to prove that the null hypothesis (there is no personal god and if there is, his existence was almost certainly not restricted to Palestine during .0000000574% of the Earth's existence) is close to infinitely more likely.
Here is another thought: all except for the most tolerant of mystics are atheists to all gods except their chosen ones. Monotheists such as Christians (side-stepping the idea whether the Trinity and the tens of thousands of saints are multiple gods) are atheists to all gods but one. Some of us go one god further.
Why is atheism always framed as a "lack of beliefs" (or sometimes a "lack of faith"). A scientist who conducts an experiment and has a negative result (such as finding Drug X is no more effective than placebo at treating Y) does not lack faith; she simply has ruled out one more hypothesis in which to place her faith, thereby honing in on those that are more worthy. We don't define modern physicians by what they don't believe in (as "those who lack faith in humoral theory" for example).
And only in religion would anyone claim that the failure to prove that Drug X is effective must mean therefore that Drug Z21753912789a4361.2 Version 4 MUST by default be effective (and the only drug that is effective). Nonsense.
The default hypothesis in science is the null hypothesis, the idea that something does not work or is no more effective than placebo. (As Karl Popper made depressingly clear, scientists never prove anything, only fail to disprove it.) Why is it that the default hypothesis for so many in Europe and the United States is that god is a single Jewish male with a strikingly Northern European visage in a toga floating in the clouds who visited Palestine about 2,000 years ago and hasn't been seen since? It's such an extraordinary, bizarre claim or set of claims. Of course, this does not mean the claims are incorrect - the fact that light is both a particle and a wave is pretty weird but turns out to be true, as best as we can tell - only that they should not be the DEFAULT, the go to explanation if other explanations cannot be proven, as though this explanation was itself proven.
Technically, there are no atheists (agnostics is the more scientifically correct term) anymore than there are scientists who have successfully proven that a drug works. But this is a very narrow, philosophical distinction that is unhelpful on a day-to-day basis. I cannot prove that my seat belt will save my life on any given trip, but you damn well better believe I buckle up. So although no one will ever be able to disprove - in a Popperian sense - all of the god hypotheses that societies have generated, it is fairly easy to prove that the null hypothesis (there is no personal god and if there is, his existence was almost certainly not restricted to Palestine during .0000000574% of the Earth's existence) is close to infinitely more likely.
Here is another thought: all except for the most tolerant of mystics are atheists to all gods except their chosen ones. Monotheists such as Christians (side-stepping the idea whether the Trinity and the tens of thousands of saints are multiple gods) are atheists to all gods but one. Some of us go one god further.
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