The faith of atheism

[Guest]

I keep hearing quite often people say "It takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian.

If You are an atheist, is that true, and why or why not??

If you are a theist, is that true, and why or why not?

[Jester]

Let’s try a slightly more obvious example. We do not go hunting Sauron and Saruman because we know Sauron and Saruman are in stories designed to entertain us.

I understand your argument. I simply disagree.
We know that these are works of fiction, but, unless you intend to establish that the Bible was intended as a work of fiction, this is a flawed analogy.


Of course, you make this clarification:

The idea of elves was not originated by Tolkien. They are clearly fantasy in his stories but Tolkien was using existing mythological figures elves, Trolls, Goblins (Orcs) etc as his material. Again Troll hunters can go looking for evidence . Whilst the origin of stories about trolls and elves is not so clear because the original authors are not specified it is still clear they are fantasy not because of a lack of evidence but because of the nature of the source material.

How is it clear that the original stories were intended as fiction when we do not know the original stories?
I'm assuming that you are not claiming that they were intended as fiction, but are claiming that they have elements that are false, whether meant seriously or not. Why are you (and I) so certain that these things are false? Is it not because we live in an era of scientific inquiry? We know that there are no elves because people have explored the world and never found any. Before anyone did that (and brought back reliable information) it would be much harder to know.
As such, when you claim that these things are obviously false based on the nature of their claims, you are not basing that opinion on the nature of their claims, but on outside information that happens to be very common in this era. So common, in fact, that it is easy to overlook the fact that one is using it in one's reasoning.
A child raised without an education in modern viewpoints would not know whether magic or science is more real just by reading myths.

Hopefully not to put too fine a point on it:

Sailors tales of wild strange animals throws up fantasy sea monsters and some real stuff too. There are plenty of myths across every possible culture. As to what is real or based on some reality and what is not is less clear. However to go hunting seven headed monsters is still a category mistake.

This is because people went out looking for such things centuries ago and found nothing. Before that, people didn't have enough information to know. The myths didn't make it clear to them that hydras weren't real.

Could be wrong, but I trust my capacity to recognize a tall story when I see one. If my argument is circular it is a harmless circularity because evidence will shift my opinion.

It is circular to say that what a witness claims can't happen, therefore the witness is wrong without giving some outside reason why the claim is impossible.
I am glad that you are willing to change your position based on evidence. I only ask that you add witness claims as non-conclusive evidence.

Then there is scripture. Atheists presume scripture is written my men (probably not women) and is open to all the conceits, deceits, narrative devices, hegemony, misogyny etc of any other ancient human (male) construction.

Do you know of any scholars who argue that the Bible is written in the literary form of a myth? My understanding was that this was not the case at all.

An ancient document is non-conclusive evidence. Having noted the document, we go looking into the matter further.

To conclude it is an ancient document with fantastic tales. You can't say fairer than that.

To conclude that something is fantastic on the grounds that it is fantastic is circular, however.

[Furrowed Brow]

How is it clear that the original stories were intended as fiction when we do not know the original stories?

It does not matter. And intentions have nothing to do with it. With the best and most sincere intentions I may pass on a story to you I think is true but is myth, and it may be something I even saw with my own eyes……but am mistaken about. Say if I said I saw Uri Geller read some ones mind or bend a spoon using mysterious unseen forces.

I'm assuming that you are not claiming that they were intended as fiction,

That’s it!

Why are you (and I) so certain that these things are false?

Because of what I and you know about narrative.

Is it not because we live in an era of scientific inquiry?

No. It is because we are humans and humans spin narratives. Even before scientific enquiry people recognized pixies were stories even if some others missed the point. However, because we live in an age of reason and science and information it does make it more way more difficult for some people to continue to miss the point.

We know that there are no elves because people have explored the world and never found any.

No. You really serious about that…. c’mon. Okayee then…please name a real elve or pixie expedition. Even in the bygone ages they would have been ridiculed if there were ever such a thing. Other than children and perhaps a very few gullible people no one has every really believed…just like no one really believes in Santa though we pretend to all the time…or at least once a year in front of the kiddies.

We know there are no elves or pixies or hydras because these magical characters and beasts are a part of our story telling history. We do not reject them now because we know better, they were always tall tales to tell by the fireside.

Before anyone did that (and brought back reliable information) it would be much harder to know.

Not at all. I suggest you are making a category mistake. These story were never true or false proposition they were always fantasy. And even in bygone times people (well most people) knew that.

such, when you claim that these things are obviously false based on the nature of their claims, you are not basing that opinion on the nature of their claims, but on outside information that happens to be very common in this era.

No that is you.

A child raised without an education in modern viewpoints would not know whether magic or science is more real just by reading myths.

Exactly. And who do these stories mostly appeal to.

The myths didn't make it clear to them that hydras weren't real.

Other than the kids you sure about that. I’m pretty sure they always knew they were tall stories.

It is circular to say that what a witness claims can't happen,

Buy you are again making a category mistake. People who said they saw pixies, elves, hydras were not witnesses. A point which kind of proves that if someone says they were a witness it don’t make them a witness.

To bat back a standard Christian retort. Why would anyone lie about hydra, pixies, trolls, Greys etc.

I only ask that you add witness claims as non-conclusive evidence.

But this is the difference. Just because someone utters says “x happened� or “I saw y� this does not make that person a witness of x or y or even that x or y occurred. No one has ever witnessed a pixie, elves, hydra, trolls, Icarus etc and those who insist they did are telling tales or have managed to convinced themselves of the truth of someone else’s lie.

And again to repeat the basic point if one seeks verification the fact that none of these stories has yet been verified does not then disprove them: so pixies, elves, trolls, hydra, Santa etc etc all remain unlikely possibilities but still possible: and if it is not obvious to you it is certainly obvious to me there is something deeply wrong with that conclusion.

Do you know of any scholars who argue that the Bible is written in the literary form of a myth?

I’m not a bible scholar but if any say walking on water and the resurrection was intended to be read a truth then they might was well also say pixies and hydras and Pegasus were meant to be true stories.

To conclude that something is fantastic on the grounds that it is fantastic is circular.

The arguments goes: these are clearly stories because of the fantastic elements to the story, anyone taken those elements seriously has made a mistake.

[cnorman18]

With all due respect to the participants in this debate, from a Jewish point of view, you are ALL missing the point.

The truth of the Hebrew Bible - I have nothing to say about the NT - is not to be found in the literal truth of the accounts it records. Whether or not something really happened is not generally considered, by us, to be a matter worth discussing; it is of no importance.

Sometimes a given narrative is very clearly NOT literally true; the six-day Creation, the Flood, the sun stopping in the sky. Sometimes the literal truth is uncertain; non-supernatural accounts of the reigns of the kings of Israel, e.g. And sometimes the accounts are probably true - the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of the Temple.

But in no case are the events themselves the issue. It is their significance, whether they are literally true or not, that matters. To take an example that is central in Jewish tradition, it is said that God Himself spoke to the entire Hebrew people from the flaming summit of Mount Sinai. The focus, when discussing that narrative, has never been on whether or not it actually happened, or is an evolution of ancient legends, or a literary composition designed to frame the body of law that developed at a later time. The focus and emphasis is on what God said in the story. That's what I mean when I talk about taking the text seriously, but not literally.

[Jester]

First, appologies in advance. I'm busy at work and might be a while in responding each time.

The fact is that all conclusions are based on premises. In that sense, then all beliefs require a certain amount of faith. So, the statement that atheism takes faith is true. It is rather the claim that it requires more faith than theism which hasn't been established.

But the reality that atheism, in and of itself, takes any faith whatsoever, is ludicrous. You might make that case for extremely strong atheists who have fanatical faith that no gods can possibly exist and I might even agree with you, but for the overwhelming majority, atheism is a response to the complete and utter lack of any objective, demonstrable evidence that any god factually exists.

I define atheism as the belief that no gods exist. This is not to say that one must be absolutely, unquestioningly committed to the idea in order to be an atheist. But reaching it as a conclusion, even a tentative conclusion, requires trust in some things that are not proved.

You'd be rather silly to claim that someone who doesn't accept the existence of Bigfoot, an a-bigfootist as it were, somehow has religious faith that Bigfoot isn't real. Why would you do it for the overwhelming majority of atheists?

Please explain here what you mean by "doesn't accept", is that to say someone who believes God not to exist, or someone who is very unsure either way?
Mostly, I don't accuse atheists of having a religious belief. I accuse them of having trust in some things beyond what is evidenced (just like everybody else).

First is the claim that there is no evidence for God. You may personally consider the evidence to be very weak, but the fact remains that there is evidence. Overstating the case to claim that such evidence is not only not compelling, but nonexistent, does not lend credulity to this position.

There are massive problems with that. Personal "evidence" is untestable and therefore, not credible for anyone but the person who has had the experience. As such, anyone except the individual who has the experience should not be expected to find that "evidence" compelling. In fact, outside of the religious sphere, people who hear voices and see things are often considered insane, it's only cultural baggage that stops us from considering people who see religious imagery or hear "the voice of God" from being equally mentally unbalanced.

If that's the extend of the "evidence" that you can present for the factual existence of a deity, then please, don't bother. It's no more reliable, testable or compelling than someone who claims to hear the voices of unicorns telling him that he's Napoleon.

My comment above was not referencing personal evidence. We were actually discussing the Bible as an historical document as a primary source.

Second is the fact that the rational response to a lack of evidence in either direction is uncertainty. Claims that string theory can be rejected without any presumptiveness on the grounds that it can't provide solid evidence are not rational.

The only rational response is rejection pending further evidence. So long as a position is unsupported by credible evidence, we can only remove it from the table of possible ideas until there is something to recommend we re-examine it. That's how rationality works. We have no evidence that unicorns exist, should we all pretend that they do or are a credible idea, just in case some evidence shows up someday? Of course not.

We have a great deal of evidence that unicorns don't exist, as we've gone searching for them without any success. The trouble with applying this same logic to God is that we are not talking about a physical thing, meaning that the same sort of tests are no longer relevant.

Third is the fact that all claims require faith due to the fact that all conclusions are based on premises. To say that one can logically establish anything, including atheism, without beginning with assumptions (premises) is not correct.

Then you would need to produce those assumptions and show that they are somehow invalid. Perhaps the only assumption that might underlie atheism is naturalism and, frankly, since no one has ever produced a single shred of evidence that there is anything beyond the natural, that's a pretty safe assumption. We have a wealth of objective, demonstrable evidence that supports a naturalistic view, we have absolutely nothing whatsoever that supports a supernaturalistic view. We have no choice, then, to reject that claim until evidence is presented, just as we'd reject the solipsist view that everything is a dream until someone presented evidence to support it.

It takes no faith to reject what has never been credibly supported.

By this line of reasoning, it takes no faith to reject every statement ever made. We have no evidence whatsoever that the physical universe exists. Referencing your "solipsist" comment, the idea that the universe is real should be rejected on the same grounds if we are going to be consistent.
It is a very old truism that "proof" that the universe is not one's personal delusion requires sensory information, which requires assuming that one's senses are working mostly correctly. The latter requires that one assume that the physical universe exists. As this would be circular reasoning, we have no valid evidence whatsoever. Given this, I would argue that anyone who believes that they are living in a real world is assuming something to be true without evidence, and does not actually practice this idea that something is false until shown to be true.

Writings about events, such as the Bible, have always been considered secondary evidence. Whether or not this is conclusive, saying that it is not evidence is simply inaccurate.

Only if you're going to give equal weight to the writings about events given in other books, which I think you're going to have to admit you won't.

I think they should be examined by consistent standards, yes.

However, even if we're going to do such and allow this "evidence" for events, that doesn't provide "evidence" for people or supernatural entities unless you want to say that the Qu'ran is evidence for Allah, the Enuma Elish is evidence for Ahura Mazda, the Vedas are evidence for Vishnu, etc. You either get an equalivalent weight of evidence for all gods, just because someone has written about them, or you get evidence for no gods because there is nothing objective we can point to. By the same token, why not use the writings of J.K. Rowling as evidence that Harry Potter was real? Where do you draw the line?

They all should be taken into account. I'm not arguing otherwise, and will entertain the argument of anyone defending the claims of any historical document, rather than dismissing it out of hand. This does not mean that I don't ultimately have to reach a conclusion about which I believe to be true, but that was never what I was initially claiming.
As for Harry Potter, there is a qualitative difference between modern fiction and historical reporting. Any who do not see the difference would consider novels and ancient documents commenting on the history of Rome to be equally valid historical information.

Other than request that logic, I would point out that this is untrue. Uncertainty is still the rational response to a lack of evidence in either direction.

Uncertainty is still not an acceptance of a proposition. Without acceptance, you do not have belief, you can only have disbelief.

Uncertainty is neither an acceptance nor a rejection of a belief. One who is uncertain, by definition, does not support either side of an argument and has no solid belief. One who is relitively certain that a belief is untrue has at least a partial belief, that ought to be supported.

I'm not quite certain what you personally mean by the word "faith". It is very likely that we are using different definitions. My position can be summed up in the statement that neither group (nor any group) has established their position beyond doubt with pure logic. This is not actually possible. As such, it takes a certain amount of trust in an idea that is not proved to believe in any claim - including Christianity and atheism.

But then "faith" becomes so broad a term as to be entirely useless. There's nothing that people *DON'T* have faith in because there is nothing that can be established without doubt, period. The only thing we can do is establish a position based on the strength of the evidence we have at the time. There is absolutely nothing in science that is absolutely, without a question, unerringly and unchangingly true.

This last comment of yours is almost exactly the same as my initial comment in this thread. That is to say, I agree completely. If you'd rather not use the word faith, and settle on "blind trust" or some other such term, I have no objections. The point is, however, that all positions require us to take guesses beyond what we know for sure.

It is a perfectly acceptable to define "atheism" as the active belief that no gods exist. The idea that there is simply no verifiable evidence for the existence of and gods would more rightly be called non-theism.

Which is entirely fine but you're not making an argument. In Greek, the prefix 'a' means 'without'. Therefore, by definition, an atheist is someone without gods, or a non-theist.

Now you're trying to assign an entirely different definition to an established word, then trying to use your new definition to smear anyone who uses that word, whether they fit your definition or not.

That's blatantly dishonest.

I meant no dishonesty. In fact, you will find that my definition is perfectly acceptable. If you do not wish to be considered someone who believes that no gods exist, I suggest that you refer to yourself as a non-theist, rather than an atheist. This is, after all, the reason why we have two terms.
Either way, you ought to clairify what you do believe: that no gods exist, that it's unlikely that any gods exist, that there is no way to know, etc. The reason I initially made this comment above was to point out that a claim like "I don't see any evidence" is not a claim in a debate on whether or not God exists. This is not such a debate, but my point was that defining yourself this way means you take no position on God's existence and do not actually debate that subject.

An ancient document is non-conclusive evidence. Having noted the document, we go looking into the matter further.

Which is all well and good, but still pointless until you actually FIND something further. An ancient document is an unsupported claim. It might give you a starting place to look, but no one ought to accept a proposition on the basis of an unsupported claim.

Discussing this issue further is not really in the scope of the thread. If, however, you consider it an unsupported claim, I am inclined to ask if you consider all historical documents to be unsupported claims. If not, how do you draw distinctions?

[Goat]

I define atheism as the belief that no gods exist. This is not to say that one must be absolutely, unquestioningly committed to the idea in order to be an atheist. But reaching it as a conclusion, even a tentative conclusion, requires trust in some things that are not proved.

Such as???

As far as I can see is that atheism for many atheists is a conclusion that since there is absolutely no objective evidence of any deity, there is every reason to conclude that there is none.. unless further evidence comes up.

[Cephus]

Apologies for being absurdly long, it happens sometimes, and no worries about being busy. It happens to all of us from time to time.

I define atheism as the belief that no gods exist. This is not to say that one must be absolutely, unquestioningly committed to the idea in order to be an atheist. But reaching it as a conclusion, even a tentative conclusion, requires trust in some things that are not proved.

You can define it as milking cows in a pink tutu if you want, your definition has no application unless your definition has some meaning to the people you're talking to. You can't pick a word with an established meaning, assign an entirely different meaning to it and then hold people who already were using that word to your new meaning, it just doesn't work that way.

If you want to do that, come up with an original word to which you can assign any meaning you like, at least you're not trying to assign non-existent baggage to something without it.

Please explain here what you mean by "doesn't accept", is that to say someone who believes God not to exist, or someone who is very unsure either way? Mostly, I don't accuse atheists of having a religious belief. I accuse them of having trust in some things beyond what is evidenced (just like everybody else).

There is no evidence for Bigfoot, therefore I do not accept the claimed existence of Bigfoot. If someone comes up with objective evidence for Bigfoot, I will examine the evidence and may change my mind based upon this new data. By the same token, there is no evidence for God (or any deity for that matter), therefore I do not accept the claimed existence of any god. If someone comes up with objective evidence for a god, I will examine the evidence and may change my mind based upon this new data. This is the same position I take for absolutely everything for which there is no objective evidence.

You're welcome to accuse them of having trust, you'd just have to be able to back that up. Personally, I cannot think of anything for which I have the kind of trust you claim I must have, certainly not for any position upon which I base a claim of factual truth. Maybe you'd like to point some of them out.

My comment above was not referencing personal evidence. We were actually discussing the Bible as an historical document as a primary source.

There are some things in the Bible which have some historical weight and many, many things which do not. Simply appearing in the Bible doesn't make it any more likely to be factually true than appearing in Harry Potter. Any credible historian will tell you that it's not appearing in a book that makes it historically valid, but appearing in multiple independent eyewitness sources, then combining that with actual physical evidence. There was a time when most historians considered the Trojan War to be a complete myth, it wasn't until someone actually came up with archaeological evidence to support it that it was given some historical credence. Even so, there are stories about the Trojan War that include gods and goddesses that nobody takes seriously. The elements that are not supported, either by objective evidence or independent eyewitness reporting, is not historical even if it appears in the narrative of something we do have evidence for.

That means that there are parts of the Bible that are generally reliable and parts that are mythical. Just because you find evidence that a site referenced in the Bible was real doesn't mean that anything reported to have happened there ever really happened.

We have a great deal of evidence that unicorns don't exist, as we've gone searching for them without any success. The trouble with applying this same logic to God is that we are not talking about a physical thing, meaning that the same sort of tests are no longer relevant.

No, we have no evidence whatsoever that unicorns don't exist. Lack of evidence, as I'm sure you've been told before, is not evidence of lack. There was a time, not all that long ago, when there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever for atoms. We had no clue they existed. That doesn't mean they only leapt into existence once we found evidence. The same is true of DNA. The same is true of the 1996 Hubble Deep Scan. There are lots of things that we don't know that doesn't change the fact that reality is reality whether or not we understand it or not. Our complete and utter lack of evidence for unicorns proves only that we have no evidence of unicorns, not that they do not exist. That said, anyone who believes in the existence of unicorns, especially anyone who makes a claim that unicorns are factually real, is operating on faulty logic and is being inherently irrational and illogical in their thinking. Certainly they're free to believe it but I think most of us would think that, given the lack of evidence, their mental capacity in that particular regard is a bit suspect.

By this line of reasoning, it takes no faith to reject every statement ever made. We have no evidence whatsoever that the physical universe exists.

Except that we all interact with it every single day, you mean. Even if, in whatever ultimate reality that might possibly exist, the physical universe isn't real and we all live in the Matrix, the fact remains that we all must live our lives as if the physical universe is real and therefore, it doesn't much matter.

Referencing your "solipsist" comment, the idea that the universe is real should be rejected on the same grounds if we are going to be consistent.

The problem with solipsism is that such a condition ought to be testable but people who believe it absolutely refuse to do so because they realize, at least on a subconscious level, that they're out of their gourds. If you honestly believed that you were the only real person in the universe, even if you're a brain in a jar, and everyone else is a figment of your imagination, then what's the point of living life the way you live it? Why stop for stop signs? Mow down pedestrians, after all, they're not real. Why not go on a shooting rampage every other day? You're not really killing anyone, you're in the equivalent of a giant video game. Anyone who honestly was convinced that the world was an illusion ought to have no problem operating that way. Most absurdly, if you're the only person around, why do so many of these solipsists get on the Internet and type messages to people that don't exist? That's utterly ridiculous.

So they rationalize why they have to act as if the world was exactly as it appears, that they'll somehow get punished if they act in a manner not consistent with the illusory world in which they don't think they really live, but that's an absurd notion. If you are aware, as these people all claim to be, that the physical world isn't real, how then can they argue that their "brain in a vat" is going to punish them for doing something that they know, for a fact, is a farce? After all, mentally we all know that fire burns and causes pain if we touch it, but if we put our hand on a picture of a fire, we don't get burned. Our brains don't punish us and cause burns to appear for touching an illusion because we know it's an illusion, just as they claim to know that everything they experience in the "real world" is an illusion. Logic and reason just don't match up to their claims, in fact, they operate in every way like they really accept the physical world is exactly as it appears and they understand that the solipsist nonsense is exactly that, a load of hooey.

I think they should be examined by consistent standards, yes.

No you don't. You say you do but you don't really. The Qu'ran records that Mohammed flew off on the back of a winged horse. If you were really willing to examine all writings by a single consistent standard, then the existence of flying horses ought to be given credence by the claim in the Qu'ran. But I'm willing to bet you don't believe for a second that's true. We can go through hundreds of books with tons of supernatural claims that we both know you'd reject out of hand, just because they don't fit your particular worldview, yet you want us all to accept your religious book somehow gets special treatment, just because you believe it.

That's not consistency.

I'm not arguing otherwise, and will entertain the argument of anyone defending the claims of any historical document, rather than dismissing it out of hand.

No one is dismissing anything out of hand, experts have been examining the Bible and other religious books for centuries, trying to find actual, demonstrable evidence to support the extraordinary claims therein and they have all come up entirely empty. In fact, every single solitary supernatural event in the Bible that we have been able to objectively examine has turned out to be entirely false. Creation? Nope. Flood? Never happened. Flat Earth? Completely wrong. At best, you've had people who have tried desperately to rationalize their way around the evidence, but there just isn't one single supernatural claim in the Bible whatsoever that has survived even the most casual objective evaluation. Nobody is dismissing it out of hand, we're not deciding it's untrue because we don't like the cover, it's been examined in great detail and, except for those people who exercise blind faith and ignore the facts, it's been found entirely lacking.

As for Harry Potter, there is a qualitative difference between modern fiction and historical reporting. Any who do not see the difference would consider novels and ancient documents commenting on the history of Rome to be equally valid historical information.

There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bible was ever intended as historical reporting. It's a mix of cultural tales and mythology, just like the Enuma Elish, just like the Vedas, just like the Qu'ran and many, many other religious writings. We have thousands of writings over thousands of years, written long before man started evaluating claims critically and logically, that show man thought of all of it as stories, not facts. I saw part of a BBC program from earlier in the year tonight, part of the "Time Team" series, where they discussed the ancient Romans going to ancient England and trying to match up their pantheon of gods with the gods of the Anglo-Saxons. They thought that if they took the gods that were the most similar and intermingled their details, they stood a better chance of the Anglo-Saxons worshipping their hybrid-gods. The Catholic Church was guilty of exactly the same thing in their expansion in the Middle Ages. Local gods, local customs and local celebrations were all mish-mashed into Catholicism in hopes that it would make pushing their religion on others easier. That's how religion has always operated up until very recently. Religions borrow traditions from surrounding and competing religions to give their beliefs an air of legitimacy. It happened in the Gospels, it happened in the Old Testament, the writers of the flood myth stole a story almost verbatim from the Hindus, the bit about the son of Noah finding his father naked and the giving of lands to the other brothers. That's not remotely original to the Hebrews. They took other stories and added their own spin and came up with a conglomeration religion.

Uncertainty is neither an acceptance nor a rejection of a belief. One who is uncertain, by definition, does not support either side of an argument and has no solid belief. One who is relitively certain that a belief is untrue has at least a partial belief, that ought to be supported.

Uncertainty is life. If you're looking for certainty, you're probably out of luck or doing something wrong. I'm uncertain that the sun is going to come up tomorrow. I'm pretty confident, given my many years of experience with it doing just that and my understanding of the science behind how and why it happens, but I have no way of being absolutely, positively, completely sure it will happen for any given day in the future. For all I know, in three hours, a giant asteroid is going to strike the Earth and throw up a massive cloud of dust that will blot out the sun for years. Or a bigger asteroid which will entirely pulverize the planet. It's happened before (both cases), there's no reason why it cannot happen again. If you're going through life looking for absolute certainty, you're living in a dream world.

All we can do is look at probabilities. Is it likely we're going to get hit by an asteroid? Hopefully not, after all we have lots of observatories looking for local asteroids that have a chance of hitting us and even though we can only scan a tiny part of the sky at any given time, asteroids don't move that fast in the scheme of things and we've mapped most of the local sky and know which asteroids are likely to be a danger and which ones are not. The next one we think has the potential to hit us and be catastrophic swings by in about 500 years.

By the same token, we cannot be certain that there are no unicorns. We already know that there is no evidence for their factual existence and so the chances of one walking out of a forest is extremely slim, but in the realm of extreme possibilities, it could conceivably happen.

At best, we can evaluate the chances of particular things happening based on the objective evidence that we currently have at our disposal. For all we know, there could be a Mars-sized asteroid coming straight at us from behind the sun where we can't see it and once we see it, we all have a week to live. Until we actually have evidence that such is actually the case though, it's foolish to believe that such is actually going to happen, we can only weigh the odds and examine the evidence we have on hand.

If you'd rather not use the word faith, and settle on "blind trust" or some other such term, I have no objections. The point is, however, that all positions require us to take guesses beyond what we know for sure.

Since none of us knows anything for sure, that's another pointless definition. However, you're still wrong. There's no point in having "blind trust" or "faith", whatever word you prefer. Take chairs as an example. In my life, I've sat in thousands of chairs. I understand how chairs work, I know the principles behind them, I understand how they are built and I've even built quite a few of them myself. Just looking at the construction and condition of any given chair, I am able to judge approximately how much weight I think the chair can support and if I think it will support my weight if I sit down. I could be wrong, but I have a lifetime of experience that makes me fairly confident that I'll be correct if I choose to sit down in any given chair. If I fall, I learn a lesson and add it to my experience set. If I don't, that confirms my experiences. But in no sense do I have "blind faith" that the chair will support me, I don't need it.

I cannot think of any examples of anything for which I would need "blind trust", nor do I think you could come up with any examples, based on many years of dealing with theists who have made similar claims, but have entirely failed to come up with examples to back up their claims.

You're certainly welcome to try, however.

In fact, you will find that my definition is perfectly acceptable.

No, I will find that you found someone else who might agree with your definition, that doesn't make your definition acceptable, perfectly or otherwise. When you're engaging in a discussion or debate with someone, definitions must be agreed upon, you don't get to impose them on the group. Likewise, there are many dictionaries that demonstrate that your definition is far from universal. You have to remember that people who write dictionaries have their own personal biases as well. Definitions are rarely a one-size-fits-all affair.

If you do not wish to be considered someone who believes that no gods exist, I suggest that you refer to yourself as a non-theist, rather than an atheist.

I can refer to myself as anything I damn well please and if you have even an ounce of integrity, you will respect that.

Discussing this issue further is not really in the scope of the thread. If, however, you consider it an unsupported claim, I am inclined to ask if you consider all historical documents to be unsupported claims. If not, how do you draw distinctions?

In fact, I do, as do most historians. Single source documents are rarely ever taken seriously as historical sources until they are supported by evidence or other independent eye-witness documents. That's how history works.

Just thought you ought to know.

[Jester]

How is it clear that the original stories were intended as fiction when we do not know the original stories?

It does not matter. And intentions have nothing to do with it. With the best and most sincere intentions I may pass on a story to you I think is true but is myth, and it may be something I even saw with my own eyes……but am mistaken about. Say if I said I saw Uri Geller read some ones mind or bend a spoon using mysterious unseen forces.

Yes, people sometimes get things wrong. How does one tell which stories are true history and which are false history? Is it not by checking them against what we know about the world?

Why are you (and I) so certain that these things are false?

Because of what I and you know about narrative.

The Bible isn't written in fictional narrative. C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like [the New Testament]. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unkown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated this whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative.

Is it not because we live in an era of scientific inquiry?

No. It is because we are humans and humans spin narratives. Even before scientific enquiry people recognized pixies were stories even if some others missed the point. However, because we live in an age of reason and science and information it does make it more way more difficult for some people to continue to miss the point.

This seems to be the claim that you simply can't trust anything a human says. While we are fallible creatures, I am left wondering where you draw lines. Do you consider ancient reports of Julius Caesar's life to likewise be a spun narrative? Why or why not?

We know that there are no elves because people have explored the world and never found any.

No. You really serious about that…. c’mon. Okayee then…please name a real elve or pixie expedition.

I didn't claim that people went out for that expressed purpose. Perhaps some have; I don't claim to know. My position is that we tend to believe in the animals that have been found (living or dead), but not in those that have not.

Even in the bygone ages they would have been ridiculed if there were ever such a thing.

This seems unsupported. On what do you base the idea that people from eras in which belief in such things abounded would ridicule this statement?

We know there are no elves or pixies or hydras because these magical characters and beasts are a part of our story telling history. We do not reject them now because we know better, they were always tall tales to tell by the fireside.

Please support this position.

Before anyone did that (and brought back reliable information) it would be much harder to know.

Not at all. I suggest you are making a category mistake. These story were never true or false proposition they were always fantasy. And even in bygone times people (well most people) knew that.

Please support this as well.

such, when you claim that these things are obviously false based on the nature of their claims, you are not basing that opinion on the nature of their claims, but on outside information that happens to be very common in this era.

No that is you.

I would say that both of us do as much when we make that claim. The fact that children tend to believe in fantastic things shows us that human nature allows for it. Simply claiming that ancient people never meant these things does not address the facts of the situation.

A child raised without an education in modern viewpoints would not know whether magic or science is more real just by reading myths.

Exactly. And who do these stories mostly appeal to.

The myths didn't make it clear to them that hydras weren't real.

Other than the kids you sure about that. I’m pretty sure they always knew they were tall stories.

Your certainty aside, on what logical grounds should we base this conclusion?

It is circular to say that what a witness claims can't happen,

Buy you are again making a category mistake. People who said they saw pixies, elves, hydras were not witnesses. A point which kind of proves that if someone says they were a witness it don’t make them a witness.

I think the term "false witnesses" would apply. In any case, I don't see how this fits in with the idea that they all knew that this was fantasy.

To bat back a standard Christian retort. Why would anyone lie about hydra, pixies, trolls, Greys etc.

I'm not accusing them of lying. I simply want to know on what grounds we're assuming which stories are factual and which are fantasy if not by basing it on observations of the world.

I only ask that you add witness claims as non-conclusive evidence.

But this is the difference. Just because someone utters says “x happened� or “I saw y� this does not make that person a witness of x or y or even that x or y occurred.

Nevertheless, witness testimony is still considered evidence in court.

No one has ever witnessed a pixie, elves, hydra, trolls, Icarus etc and those who insist they did are telling tales or have managed to convinced themselves of the truth of someone else’s lie.

This does not contradict anything I claimed, actually. I take the position that we don't believe in these things because we don't experience them. We assume those that claimed as much were mistaken.

And again to repeat the basic point if one seeks verification the fact that none of these stories has yet been verified does not then disprove them: so pixies, elves, trolls, hydra, Santa etc etc all remain unlikely possibilities but still possible: and if it is not obvious to you it is certainly obvious to me there is something deeply wrong with that conclusion.

The lack of verification would be an outside check, such as I suggested. This makes perfect sense to me.
As these claims have to do with physical things, a physical check would be good evidence against their existence. While we can't ever claim absolute certainty about anything, as you point out, I would agree that it makes the most sense to operate under the assumption that they don't exist until new evidence is presented.

Do you know of any scholars who argue that the Bible is written in the literary form of a myth?

I’m not a bible scholar but if any say walking on water and the resurrection was intended to be read a truth then they might was well also say pixies and hydras and Pegasus were meant to be true stories.

You mentioned earlier that you are not concerned with what is meant to be true, this makes me a little uncertain about some of the meaning here.
We can't, however, reject all things that reference the supernatural as untrue on the grounds that they do as much if we are doing so to make the case that the supernatural does not exist. This is circular reasoning.
More simply, the New Testament is not written in the literary form of a myth, but in the form of a history.

To conclude that something is fantastic on the grounds that it is fantastic is circular.

The arguments goes: these are clearly stories because of the fantastic elements to the story, anyone taken those elements seriously has made a mistake.

This is circular if you are using this argument to argue that the fantastic does not exist. Let me rephrase your statement here:
The fantastic doesn't exist. We cannot count reports of them as more than stories because those reports contain fantastic elements, which obviously means we shouldn't take them seriously. This proves that the fantastic doesn't exist.
This is clearly circular, but let me know where you consider your argument to be significantly different from this.

[Jester]

With all due respect to the participants in this debate, from a Jewish point of view, you are ALL missing the point.

The truth of the Hebrew Bible - I have nothing to say about the NT - is not to be found in the literal truth of the accounts it records. Whether or not something really happened is not generally considered, by us, to be a matter worth discussing; it is of no importance.

Sometimes a given narrative is very clearly NOT literally true; the six-day Creation, the Flood, the sun stopping in the sky. Sometimes the literal truth is uncertain; non-supernatural accounts of the reigns of the kings of Israel, e.g. And sometimes the accounts are probably true - the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of the Temple.

But in no case are the events themselves the issue. It is their significance, whether they are literally true or not, that matters. To take an example that is central in Jewish tradition, it is said that God Himself spoke to the entire Hebrew people from the flaming summit of Mount Sinai. The focus, when discussing that narrative, has never been on whether or not it actually happened, or is an evolution of ancient legends, or a literary composition designed to frame the body of law that developed at a later time. The focus and emphasis is on what God said in the story. That's what I mean when I talk about taking the text seriously, but not literally.

Thanks for bringing this up.
I'd say that it is well worth mentioning that literal fact is not the ultimate point, but regardless of our interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament is at least partially concerned with historical fact. I'd comment on that insofar as it goes, but do not want to imply that either are ultimately about these things.

[Jester]

I define atheism as the belief that no gods exist. This is not to say that one must be absolutely, unquestioningly committed to the idea in order to be an atheist. But reaching it as a conclusion, even a tentative conclusion, requires trust in some things that are not proved.

Such as???

As far as I can see is that atheism for many atheists is a conclusion that since there is absolutely no objective evidence of any deity, there is every reason to conclude that there is none.. unless further evidence comes up.

There is evidence, as we has been discussed on this thread. An atheist would be more reasonable to claim that the evidence is insufficient.
One thing for which there is no evidence, which has also been discussed, is the existence of the physical universe. There is no objective evidence whatsoever for this. Do you feel that there is a logical reason to accept the universe as real, but reject theism on the grounds you mention?

This brings me back to my original point: that all people, including both Christians and atheists, have to trust in some things without sufficient evidence by any reasonable standard and all things without absolute proof.

[Goat]

I define atheism as the belief that no gods exist. This is not to say that one must be absolutely, unquestioningly committed to the idea in order to be an atheist. But reaching it as a conclusion, even a tentative conclusion, requires trust in some things that are not proved.

Such as???

As far as I can see is that atheism for many atheists is a conclusion that since there is absolutely no objective evidence of any deity, there is every reason to conclude that there is none.. unless further evidence comes up.

There is evidence, as we has been discussed on this thread. An atheist would be more reasonable to claim that the evidence is insufficient.
One thing for which there is no evidence, which has also been discussed, is the existence of the physical universe. There is no objective evidence whatsoever for this. Do you feel that there is a logical reason to accept the universe as real, but reject theism on the grounds you mention?

This brings me back to my original point: that all people, including both Christians and atheists, have to trust in some things without sufficient evidence by any reasonable standard and all things without absolute proof.

What piece of objective evidence do we have of a deity?

How is claiming that the physical existence of the universe being evidence for god anything more than circular reasoning and begging the question?