Atheism, Universal Negatives and Stuff

Have been reading friend Wildilocks' online stuff. Being an atheist (a nice one), she sometimes writes about that. Here's something I replied to one of hers...

The “knowing God can't exist” argument gets people sometimes, and people on both sides of the divide make mistakes in their thinking imo. eg I came across a slightly erroneous article not long ago where the writer says:

Sophomoric critics of atheism often charge that atheism is committed to proving the negative proposition "no gods exist" and, since allegedly no one can prove a negative, this shows that atheism is an absurd doctrine. The first thing to note is that it is often possible to prove negatives. Euclid proved that there is no highest prime number. I can prove that my bicycle is not in the basement by going downstairs, turning on the light, and looking around.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_parsons/misconceptions.html

But it's not “proving a negative” that is impossible. It's proving a UNIVERSAL negative that is impossible, and this is both good logic, and misunderstood by the writer in question.

For example, take the statement “no aliens have ever visited earth”. I don't personally believe aliens have visited planet earth – but I can't prove that, because I don't have all knowledge about all alleged visitations on earth at all times (universal knowledge). So if pressed, the best I can do is say “From what I know, I don't believe it likely that aliens have visited earth. But I might be wrong.”

In the same way, I cannot state – in a logical sense – “No gods exist”. If pressed, the best I can do is say “From what I know, I don't believe any gods exist. But I could be wrong.” So technically, it's correct to say only agnosticism is valid. (Epistemology is an interesting, but arcane subject.)

HOWEVER, most of us aren't entirely logical in every single thing we do/think. I think it's perfectly ok to say: “I can't prove there is no god, but I think the evidence is so overwhelming against her existence, that I call myself an atheist. So that atheism might be called the extreme end of agnosticism. I am thinking of Dawkins' chapter title “Why There Is Almost Certainly No God.”

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Here is the bestest article ever on atheists and christians being nice people to each other because they actually have things in common http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/godfuse.html

I also learned a new word: Transhumanism. Generally, the use of technology to expand human capabilities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism and http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index


listening to Helix - Afterglow (my new trance track i made - it's good!)