Atheism is a question of faith, not science.
Or so said the sub-headline on the letters page in Wednesday's Metro.
I couldn't have put it better myself...
the purpose of religion
One of the things which featured in the recent debate on this post is the idea that “religion should be about improving oneself”. This has got me thinking; ‘religion’ of course takes many forms, but in the vast majority of cases I disagree with this. To paraphrase MarkC, religion is certainly something which as a by-product might help with “improving oneself”, but however you measure self-improvement it is not the sole point, certainly not in the Judeo-Christian case. In fact, if your sole aim is to “improve yourself”, why waste your time playing around with the trappings of religion? Most religions are based around the idea of faith in God, and that, surely, is the point. Considering Christianity specifically, Jesus said “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself ” and so ‘religion’ should not be in danger of becoming all about wo
Comments
You are correct to an extent, though your tone in Metro was excessive and dare I say it arrogant.
Furthermore there is a difference between the belief in god and the belief in no god.
Belief in god is the belief in something unlikely, in the absence of any evidence and is a belief usually furthered through parental or other conditioning. People who believe in god are usually very keen to make young children do the same for this reason.
"Confirmed Atheists", to use your language, reach a significantly more probable conclusion (though agreed not proved) based on the available evidence.
If god existed, then proof would be self evident, (if we believe the countless religious texts it was always abundant in the past!). However, you could argue then any unlikely thing existed on the grounds that you had not proved that it existed. I think that most people would accept that waterfalls that defy gravity do not exist naturally. But would you only accept that this was true if you proved that no such waterfall existed? As human beings we are always revising and fine tuning what we hold to be true based on the evidence to hand, what we discover and our ability to determine what is probable or improbable. Why should a belief in god be subject to different rules?
So I would agree that atheism is a view, but to say that it is faith is stretching it.
Before you point out examples that contradict the above, it is worth thinking whether they are representative of what is genuinely true, or somewhat less frequent counter examples.
Dev