Why didn't humans stop at atheism? What went wrong? — VoidDetector
I have for some time thought that Athiesm is not just the denial of god, like the denial of the property red, but rather the absence of thinking of the color red, not thinking of a god. Maybe there is another term for this, with a definition more fitting than Atheism. — Josh Alfred
I do not know (no evidence either way) that ancient people (I'd put the marker for "ancient" at a minimum of 10,000 years ago) did or did not believe in gods. — Bitter Crank
I don't understand why people would believe in things that there was no evidence for. — Andrew4Handel
Conflicts between atheism and religion are often assumed to be a feature of the post-Enlightenment West alone. — Whitmarsh
When Imperial Rome embraced Christianity, that marked an end to serious thought about atheism in the West for over a millennium. It is this historical fact that we tend to misread, when we think of atheism as an exclusively modern, western phenomenon. If we compare the post-enlightenment West to what preceded it, we can very quickly come to the false assumption that societies fall neatly into two groups: the secular-atheist-modernist on the one side and the entirely religious on the other. What pre-Christian antiquity shows, however, is that it is perfectly possible to have a largely religious society that also incorporates and acknowledges numerous atheists with minimal conflict. — Whitmarsh
When we consider the long duration of history, the oddity is not the public visibility of atheism in the last two hundred years of the West, but the Christian-imperialist society that legislated against certain kinds of metaphysical belief. — Whitmarsh
Where we come apart I believe is I believe that atheism is an active objection to a proposed belief. One can not be a - anything, without there being an anything. — Rank Amateur
We later found out that science provides better answers. — S
If that were the case, then religion would no longer exist, yet it persists. — Hanover
Science provides all sorts of information about how the world works but provides us little guidance on how we ought to live in the world. — Hanover
Even if all religious thought is factually incorrect, it might still have utility. — Hanover
No, not necessarily. If everyone realised that the answers that science provides are better, then that possible consequence would make sense. But sadly countless people do not realise this. — S
It isn't supposed to, is it? I was making a like for like comparison. That's like saying that a hand saw isn't very good at drilling holes into wood. — S
The Scientific Revolution was about 500 years ago. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Long live science. — S
Yeah, but when I was talking about answers, that's not what I meant. It might have "utility" for some people to believe that 1 + 1 = 3, but we don't consider 3 to be the right answer. — S
0 is one common definition of atheism, though. It's variously called implicit, negative, weak or soft atheism. — Terrapin Station
Right on. How the World actually is doesn't give an answer how it should be. Or how you should live your life and what is good and what is bad.If that were the case, then religion would no longer exist, yet it persists. Science provides all sorts of information about how the world works but provides us little guidance on how we ought to live in the world. Even if all religious thought is factually incorrect, it might still have utility. — Hanover
No, not necessarily. If everyone realised that the answers that science provides are better, then that possible consequence would make sense. But sadly countless people do not realise this. — S
It isn't supposed to, is it? I was making a like for like comparison. That's like saying that a hand saw isn't very good at drilling holes into wood. — S
I think it shouldn't be considered as atheism because, to be fair, the 0 state isn't a claim while atheism is one - that God doesn't exist. — TheMadFool
Answers to what is the question though. Religion doesn't provide better answers to the question of what the earth was like a million years ago, but it does provide better answers to the question of how one should live one's life. — Hanover
So it would seem you weren't offering any role for religion and were celebrating its death. — Hanover
We must now define "right," which is a terribly nebulous concept, asking what is truth and what is not. I think of utility as the better way to assess that. For example, is the smell of decaying flesh really foul, or do we just perceive it that way out of utility to save us from eating rotten poisonous food?
I agree that science has much more utility in explaining how the physical world works than does religion, and I find those who rely on the Bible or other ancient texts to explain our physical origins to be pretty ridiculous. It's be equally ridiculous to use science to try to figure out how to live a virtuous life, and we'd all agree there is no reasonable empirical study you'd conduct to determine that. Since the question of virtue is one of significance, and science offers us no solutions in that regard, there then is a logical basis for keeping God on life support. — Hanover
Why would there be a burden of proof issue with atheists anyway? — Terrapin Station
I think it shouldn't be considered as atheism because, to be fair, the 0 state isn't a claim while atheism is one - that God doesn't exist. — TheMadFool
Why didn't humans stop at atheism? What went wrong? — VoidDetector
How strictly are you using "proof"? Because no empirical claim is provable if we're using that term fairly strictly. If you just means "reasons for belief," presumably most people will have that. — Terrapin Station
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