[fjorder]

It bothers me when people say that science conflicts with religion. It certainly conflicts with specific religious dogmas, such as young-earth creationism, but the frontiers of science fall well short of proving or disproving the existence of any possible deity.

If you go strictly by evidence, agnosticism is a tenable position, but both theism and atheism require leaps of faith beyond scientific fact. As such, atheists who claim science is on their side bother me almost as much as young-earth creationists.

[tensor]

Atheism requires no leap of faith. You can not believe in a god, and operate your life as such, while still acknowledging that you have no proof that there is not god. Nearly every single self described atheist has this position.

On the other than, people who claim to be somehow neither atheist nor theist are being intellectually dishonest to both themselves and everyone else. You operate your life under one of these assumptions.

edit: and for reference, you can either be an agnostic atheist, gnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or gnostic theist. These cover all possibilities as the concepts are defined.

[rtpg]

> you can either be an agnostic atheist, gnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or gnostic theist

I have a TV. I don't know how it works. Some people say it's because of electrical waves in the air (whatever that is), others say its because there are small people in the box acting things out for me.

I don't care, and have no opinion on the subject.

Being this form of agnostic (being intellectually honest with yourself to say you don't have an informed opinion either way) is valid.

[trowftd]

It's pretty straightforward to check if there are people in your TV box or not. Doesn't sound like a reasonable (or valid) position.

What about Santa or the Spaghetti Monster? Do we have to be (or claim to be) agnostics about everything we can't prove it doesn't exist? There's no need to prove these things because there's no good reason to believe otherwise. And no, just feeling you're right and visions don't count.

TLDR: Burden of proof is on religious people, not on atheists. Thus, agnosticism seems like an unnecessary compromise.

[beloch]

Unless somebody managed to prove/disprove the existence of God while I wasn't looking, being an atheist or theist requires you to make an assumption in the absence of hard data.

You claim that we operate under a strictly Boolean assumption that god either does exist or does not exist, with "I don't know" being incompatible for some reason. What is that reason? Do you have an argument supporting this claim?

[jonsterling]

I think it's less the case that science conflicts with religion (since as science grows, religion can continue to shrink; there's no clear point at which we will say, “Welp, looks like the religion is all gone now”), but rather that maintaining a scientific worldview conflicts with religion.

This worldview is what allows us to temporarily reject, for instance, premises which are brought up in poor faith, or premises for which there is no clear need. For instance, if in the course of a lie, a lier accidentally says something true, we still reserve our credence for when someone else more likely to be telling the truth says so.

Or, if you have a mathematical theory which is not disproved by anything, we wait until it appears to be implied by some other believed-in theory before accepting it a “fact”. If a theory does not appear to have arisen as a result of other true things, than it may still be true, but we don't need to accept it as such until it seems necessary.

So: The pragmatic worldview necessitated for getting anything done in science tends to lead to atheism.

[beloch]

In science:

-In science, the ideal is that credibility is no substitute for data and logic. That's not always true in practice, especially when the media gets involved.

-Premises for which there are no clear need are pursued ardently. "Need" is often rather late to the party, and it frequently never shows up at all.

-Theories always remain theories, but become "accepted" once enough tests that could disprove them fail to do so. Even accepted theories are continually tested as new tests are developed.

-Belief is irrelevant.

-If a theory reduces down to another theory, it isn't really a new theory at all.

I'm not sure if your conclusion has anything to do with your arguments either.

For what its worth, I've always felt that, for those of us in scientific fields, what is known is miniscule compared to what is unknown, and we're free to believe whatever the heck we want about the unknown so long as we're willing to react logically when some beloved part of our unknown universe becomes known to conflict with what we believe. If you're an agoraphobe, faith can fill in the vast empty spaces where fact and logic have not yet taken us. It's those who put faith first that we must beware of! They often speak of science in similar language as you, as if it were merely another religion with a different set of beliefs, and therefore what you believe is merely a difference of opinion!

[gfodor]

I suppose you don't believe in Thor, Odin, or any other ancient gods. That's quite a leap of faith you're making there!