If you use the that definition instead of saying that you believe there is no God, but go on to say that you can know the truth of Gods or Nothing, then you are in fact believing for anyone who is watching. Only you think you know, which is quite similar to what a lot of religious people think. That is exactly the delusion you think you see befalling them.
Try again, read all the words this time, not just the ones you liked. I'm sorry you can't tell the difference between choosing the believe something without evidence and reaching a conclusion based on evidence. That must be hard.
I agree with all that. In fact, a lot of the people who post here who style themselves scientific ought to read what you wrote carefully, because that doesn't seem to be the way they regard scientific theory. The seem to hold it more on the order of religious faith.
No, they don't. You just wish they did. You don't really seem to agree with anything I said, but are eager to twist it to match what you want to say.
Some people want to have their cakes and eat them too, huffing and puffing about "scientific consensus" without really examining anything or considering any alternative hypotheses on one hand and then retreating to a more limited purview for science when called on it.
What you don't see is how the scientific community has already examined and dismissed all your alternative hypotheses. They do this long before you ever hear about their findings. It's part of how they get to their initial findings. That discussion is already over before you or I get there. That's what you and other science deniers don't seem to understand. They're not ignoring your assertions. They just dealt with it already. It's like they're looking for a lost TV remote and they're discussing how it could have gone missing from the house, and you're jumping up and down and shouting about it being under the couch, despite them already looking there half a dozen times and it not being there.
Seen correctly, science stands entirely outside of the metaphysical and has nothing to say about it.
There is no metaphysical. Or at least, no evidence of metaphysical. A few people's personal emotional experiences, which have physical explanations, are not evidence of spirits or magic or souls or deities or whatever. If those existed, they would still be physical phenomena.
Which is why I recount these seemingly implausible theories of the formation of the universe. The layman has no choice but to take these ideas seriously or not on faith. It's unlikely that he will be able to confirm the calculations for himself. So does this constitute faith or not? It's got to be faith, because there is nothing else. Delve into the matter more deeply and you'll find more and more leaps of faith are required even by the physicists in order to make progress. This is especially true of that shifting hall of mirrors known as String Theory.
And this is where we always hit the argument from incredulity. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true. You can educate yourself. I have. I understand evolutionary biology and the big bang and the expanding universe. It's not that complicated. I don't understand every detail, but I know enough of the basics to determine that the people who are advocating for them aren't lying. It also helps a lot to see the myriad benefits we have reaped based on our understanding and mastery of these concepts. Without evolution, there are no GMO crops. There would have been no Green Revolution and no one would know about Norman Borlaug. There is plenty of evidence that you or I can obtain to determine what we think the truth is. That's not religious faith at all. There is no need to simply defer to the authority of anyone. But the scientific community is correct.
You see leaps of faith because you don't understand what's going on and want to discredit the scientific process. Your bringing up String Theory demonstrates that. No one understands String Theory because it was only ever piecemeal and unfinished. And is largely discounted by now. But contrary to what you believe, no one ever proclaimed it to be an absolute truth. It was the best explanation we had at the time. Fortunately, the scientific method allows us to constantly come up with and test new explanations, some of which are better.
So I return to my original point. Just because you don't understand something in science doesn't mean that other people don't or that anyone has to take anything on faith. You could educate yourself on various scientific subjects as much as you wanted, and obtain every piece of information necessary to satisfy your skepticism. But you don't. You argue from ignorance and incredulity.
Atheists love to point out the atrocities committed because of religion, but they fail to recognize that the absence of religion doesn't mean that mankind would automatically stop killing. They would just have a different reasoning. The problem isn't religion- it's humanity.
No one thinks that all violence would suddenly disappear without religion. But some of it would. And without that justification, it wouldn't come back. Just because your religion teaches a defeatist position that we're all hopeless sinners doesn't make it true.
. Don't presume to tell me what I don't know.
