Do Athiests Rely on Faith?

[Alethe]

Atheists claim that life was created naturally and spontaneously from tiny chemicals into comparatively large, complex organisms (cells). They use "could have" a lot in theories, but when it's further explored, those theories run into scientific laws that say it "could not have". It is a massive jump from those tiny chemicals to cells and actually defies natural laws. Some of these laws include, but are not limited to:

• *Probabilities: The sheer number of permutations required for even the simplest of molecules (proteins or ribozymes) defies laws of mathematics.
  *Limited Materials: No experiment, no observation, nor study of any pre-biotic Earth conditions (including space) is able to come close to producing all the components required for life in the same place at the same time (amino acids, nucleic acids - particularly troublesome, sugars, and fatty acids).
  *Homochirality: All experiments that produce life-required components also produce their mirrored image (racemic mixture), which prevents them from forming anything useful.
  *Energy: The necessary energy required to create peptide or phosphodiester bonds is also used to break those bonds, preventing them from forming the long chains necessary for life. An example; any lightning strikes that would form bonds would break the bonds the very next strike (consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics especially in an open system).
  *Oxygen: Oxygen prevents bonding, but also creates ozone, protecting from the sun's UV rays. Life can't form with oxygen and life would burn up without it.
  *Water: Water is a byproduct when peptide bonds form. Water also works in reverse to break down the bonds (hydrolysis). Therefore, proteins could not form in or around water (consistent with Le Chatelier's Principle).

You see, I like science. I can trust science because it performs in consistent ways. The natural laws above actually inhibit or prevent life from forming.

Atheists have to believe that to create life abiogenetically that these natural laws broke down and didn't work, that science didn't work. Since they have to believe that science doesn't work all the time, there must be some supernatural law that supersedes known scientific law.

That sounds a lot like faith. Why do atheists rely on faith? And what is it in the supernatural that they actually have faith in?

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 74 by FarWanderer]

I'm not "trying to shut you down" there's just nothing here. I a just not a believer, I am a statistician. Belief or faith is just the condition of pretending that something is 100% true or false when there is neither data nor analysis to lead to a such a surety.

"Faith" and "belief" are the shortcut that most people use, the problem is that it is binary ... it exists or it doesn't, one does not 'kinda have faith."

That is not how the trained scientific mind works, though we sometime commit a semantic slip and use those words when we mean "it is rather likely that ..."

Jashwell describes the words "faith" and "belief" exactly how I understand them. For the word "faith" I think we are on the same page (at least regarding what it means in the context of this discussion). However, my use of the word "belief" was meant to apply to anything that you hold true, whether it's based on evidence or not.

I have trouble with the way you use belief, and for that matter "true." There really is not such thing as "true" except in mathematical proofs, all there is some degree of "likely." Most folks would call something that is 99.9999% probable "true" but it is still short of 100% (which is what I would call true). Thus I understand your use of the word "belief" (being shy of 100%) but I do not tend use that word of that concept, except when I am sloppy.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 78 by H.sapiens]

I'm generally not a fan of semantic systems whereby the use of entire volumes of words are banned from reasonable usage purely because they have a limited scope.

There are cases where I take issue with some word usages, but those are almost all cases where the word is taken out of scope.

We can reasonably talk about what we know and what is true without people expecting us to talk with 100% certainty. There are namespaces in which 'fact' does mean 'certainly true', but it should be remembered that it means 'as far as this topic is concerned', and we certainly shouldn't stop using words because a certain abstract construct uses them its own way.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 78 by H.sapiens]

I'm generally not a fan of semantic systems whereby the use of entire volumes of words are banned from reasonable usage purely because they have a limited scope.

There are cases where I take issue with some word usages, but those are almost all cases where the word is taken out of scope.

We can reasonably talk about what we know and what is true without people expecting us to talk with 100% certainty. There are namespaces in which 'fact' does mean 'certainly true', but it should be remembered that it means 'as far as this topic is concerned', and we certainly shouldn't stop using words because a certain abstract construct uses them its own way.

Overall I agree with you. In this case, and some others like "theory" I take a more rigid and rigorous stance, it cuts the confusion and thus enhances communication.

[FarWanderer]

[Replying to post 74 by FarWanderer]

I'm not "trying to shut you down" there's just nothing here. I a just not a believer, I am a statistician. Belief or faith is just the condition of pretending that something is 100% true or false when there is neither data nor analysis to lead to a such a surety.

"Faith" and "belief" are the shortcut that most people use, the problem is that it is binary ... it exists or it doesn't, one does not 'kinda have faith."

That is not how the trained scientific mind works, though we sometime commit a semantic slip and use those words when we mean "it is rather likely that ..."

Jashwell describes the words "faith" and "belief" exactly how I understand them. For the word "faith" I think we are on the same page (at least regarding what it means in the context of this discussion). However, my use of the word "belief" was meant to apply to anything that you hold true, whether it's based on evidence or not.

I have trouble with the way you use belief, and for that matter "true." There really is not such thing as "true" except in mathematical proofs, all there is some degree of "likely." Most folks would call something that is 99.9999% probable "true" but it is still short of 100% (which is what I would call true). Thus I understand your use of the word "belief" (being shy of 100%) but I do not tend use that word of that concept, except when I am sloppy.

OK then. Why is it that you hold it "probable" that you have been "shown" that you can learn from science?

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 74 by FarWanderer]

I'm not "trying to shut you down" there's just nothing here. I a just not a believer, I am a statistician. Belief or faith is just the condition of pretending that something is 100% true or false when there is neither data nor analysis to lead to a such a surety.

"Faith" and "belief" are the shortcut that most people use, the problem is that it is binary ... it exists or it doesn't, one does not 'kinda have faith."

That is not how the trained scientific mind works, though we sometime commit a semantic slip and use those words when we mean "it is rather likely that ..."

Jashwell describes the words "faith" and "belief" exactly how I understand them. For the word "faith" I think we are on the same page (at least regarding what it means in the context of this discussion). However, my use of the word "belief" was meant to apply to anything that you hold true, whether it's based on evidence or not.

I have trouble with the way you use belief, and for that matter "true." There really is not such thing as "true" except in mathematical proofs, all there is some degree of "likely." Most folks would call something that is 99.9999% probable "true" but it is still short of 100% (which is what I would call true). Thus I understand your use of the word "belief" (being shy of 100%) but I do not tend use that word of that concept, except when I am sloppy.

OK then. Why is it that you hold it "probable" that you have been "shown" that you can learn from science?

Why are you asking such questions? Do you deny that the scientific method is a good way to arrive at the truth of many given questions?

If you don't deny that, then it being probable to learn from science seems reasonable. However, if you don't find the scientific method reasonable, I would ask "why"?

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 74 by FarWanderer]

I'm not "trying to shut you down" there's just nothing here. I a just not a believer, I am a statistician. Belief or faith is just the condition of pretending that something is 100% true or false when there is neither data nor analysis to lead to a such a surety.

"Faith" and "belief" are the shortcut that most people use, the problem is that it is binary ... it exists or it doesn't, one does not 'kinda have faith."

That is not how the trained scientific mind works, though we sometime commit a semantic slip and use those words when we mean "it is rather likely that ..."

Jashwell describes the words "faith" and "belief" exactly how I understand them. For the word "faith" I think we are on the same page (at least regarding what it means in the context of this discussion). However, my use of the word "belief" was meant to apply to anything that you hold true, whether it's based on evidence or not.

I have trouble with the way you use belief, and for that matter "true." There really is not such thing as "true" except in mathematical proofs, all there is some degree of "likely." Most folks would call something that is 99.9999% probable "true" but it is still short of 100% (which is what I would call true). Thus I understand your use of the word "belief" (being shy of 100%) but I do not tend use that word of that concept, except when I am sloppy.

OK then. Why is it that you hold it "probable" that you have been "shown" that you can learn from science?

Not to approach a tautology, but that is what my empirical experience has been in 64 years on this planet.

[FarWanderer]

[Replying to H.sapiens]

[Replying to Clownboat]

Why are you asking such questions? Do you deny that the scientific method is a good way to arrive at the truth of many given questions?

If you don't deny that, then it being probable to learn from science seems reasonable. However, if you don't find the scientific method reasonable, I would ask "why"?

I do not deny that science is a good way to arrive at the truth of many questions (notwithstanding hyper-strict defintions of "truth"). However, I acknowledge that said belief ultimately traces itself back to faith.

What it comes down to is that I must have faith in my own cognitive abilities if I am going to even attempt to make judgments about the objective world.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to H.sapiens]

[Replying to Clownboat]

Why are you asking such questions? Do you deny that the scientific method is a good way to arrive at the truth of many given questions?

If you don't deny that, then it being probable to learn from science seems reasonable. However, if you don't find the scientific method reasonable, I would ask "why"?

I do not deny that science is a good way to arrive at the truth of many questions (notwithstanding hyper-strict defintions of "truth"). However, I acknowledge that said belief ultimately traces itself back to faith.

What it comes down to is that I must have faith in my own cognitive abilities if I am going to even attempt to make judgments about the objective world.

I understand what you are saying, but that a basically semantic game that I try hard not to play. Experience, personal and documented by others has taught me that science yields a rather high probability of a correct answer ... that is to say an answer that is difficult to falsify and that stands the test of time. If you want to make the jump from my willingness to stop at ninety-odd percent probability and stretch it to cover 100% by using the words faith and belief, go right ahead ... I think that is the same sort of cop-out as "the universe is so complicated, intelligence is just ordered complexity, the universe it intelligent, let's call that intelligence God!" No thanks to either.

[FarWanderer]

[Replying to H.sapiens]

Sure, I can believe in that God (such as it is). It sounds like a kind of pantheism and I don't have any problem with pantheism. In fact, I see no difference between pantheism and materialism except for in how they like to label the "stuff" of reality.

Though it is true that some theists try, fallaciously, to use arguments like the one you cite above to prove their theistic God exists, when all it proves is the existence of a pantheistic "God", whatever that actually implies...

In any case, the important point is that all beliefs are filtered through ones own judgment. You have judged from your own experiences that science works. Even the reliability of the reported experiences of others is judged by you.

But who or what decided you were ever qualified to make these judgments in the first place?

You did. Under no external authority, you simply decided that you are capable of understanding the world. I classify that as faith.

[truestory]

I understand why theists try to equivocate atheism as its own religion and that it requires faith. It's easier to rephrase and feel like the playing field is level and the choices have equal footing. Faith vs. Faith.

The facts still remain the same, I do not believe in the evidence presented for x god so I do not believe. If that makes me an atheist then so be it, but it does not require the same usage of the word faith as the faith it takes to believe in a well known religion.