[ericd]

Atheism is just as unprovable as theism.

And it's fairly easy to reconcile a belief that evolution is true with a belief in a complex force that influences things in the background, outside of our observation - humans have never kept tabs on more than a small percentage of happenings on this planet at once, and without being able to accurately model everything at once, we won't be able to prove that there's nothing outside our model of the universe at play. Even then, something with a suitably powerful influence over reality could alter our observations. To believe that this is impossible and that we're capable of observing/measuring every part of reality is hubris. We only evolved to see and intuitively comprehend the small piece of it that helped us best survive given our environment and unforgiving energy and developmental constraints.

[floomp]

> Atheism is just as unprovable as theism.

Perhaps, but what matters is that it asserts less than theism. When you start from no evidence, you need to believe in as little as possible until enough evidence presents itself that you can change your mind.

This is especially true given that religion has a highly plausible explanation as man-made, a creation of human imagination. When you have a collection of assertions, with no evidence, and the only physical source is the human mind itself, why would you believe it has any correspondence with reality?

> And it's fairly easy to reconcile a belief that evolution is true with a belief in a complex force that influences things in the background

I never disputed this.

> To believe that this is impossible and that we're capable of observing/measuring every part of reality is hubris.

I feel like you have created a strawman, because I never used any of these arguments.

Yes, of course we don't know every happening in the universe. Yes, our senses and reasoning skills are limited. That doesn't make religion true. How could it? Religious people have the same senses, the same access to knowledge as everyone else. I don't believe that religious people have any insight into the workings of the universe that no one else does, especially given that there are so many religions that can't agree with each other about even basic tenets. It's a very human creation - not a truth of the universe.

But I'll never assert that theism is impossible. That wouldn't be defensible, because we don't have all the information in the universe (or outside it!). Of course it's possible, but that doesn't matter, because we have no evidence whatsoever to believe it.

[ericd]

Sure, Occam's razor and all that. That doesn't really point out a correct explanation, just which one is more likely in the absence of other evidence, and it's not really something I'd bring into an argument with someone firmly on the other side of the fence.

I never argued that religion is true, I argued that atheism (rejecting the existence of a God) is no less unprovable, and might be a bit worse - the theists at least have personal experiences that might have made them believe - it seems less likely to have an experience that proves to one that there cannot be a deity. I'm personally agnostic.

And some people do have different senses and sensitivities than others, people aren't working from the same vantage point. Perhaps some religious people have experiences that others of us haven't had that proved to them just as concretely as seeing would to nonbelievers.