Text 1582, 69 rader
Skriven 2006-06-03 17:07:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2028.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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On Fri, 2 Jun 2006 22:50:48 +0000 (UTC), Kurt Ullman
<kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:

>In article <8me182ljde4lc4vv8ag94j33q14hgdo6ab@4ax.com>,
> Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 20 May 2006 18:53:38 +0000 (UTC), Kurt Ullman
>> <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >  But most have some kind of redemption for the Faithful. It might be 
>> >reincarnation, or you chi surviving or something similar. Most have some 
>> >sort of soul that doesn't just disappear if well maintained (although 
>> >they may use different names, they all pretty much shake out to the same 
>> >thing).  The aetheist thinks that there is nothing bad that can happen 
>> >to him or her upon their death, it is as much a leap of faith (since it 
>> >is unknowable) as a belief in a god or gods. NO matter which faith(es) 
>> >you don't subscribe to.
>> 
>> It might be more accurate to say that the atheist sees no evidence
>> that anything bad, or anything at all, will happen to him after death.
>> That's not a leap of faith, but a commonplace of logic: the absence of
>> evidence isn't evidence. I make much the same assumption every time I
>> choose to sit in my backyard on the assumption that a truck won't
>> barrel through it or a meteor fall on it.
>
>  Nah. Still a leap of faith.  If for no other reason than the need for 
>faith in thinking you had all the information you needed to make a 
>logical decision. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack of existence. 
>Too many things we now know as true, were dismissed even a decade or so 
>ago.. let alone in the Dark Ages.  Don;t know means don't know. So, we 
>take a leap of faith that our understanding is enough.

Well, yeah, but we have to do that every time we do anything, don't
we? Those peas I ate yesterday could have been poisoned by terrorists,
a sinkhole may open in the sidewalk and swallow us up. All we can hope
to do is use personal and group observation and logical inference to
minimize the probability of an untoward event while using the absence
of observation and the presence of logical contradiction to avoid
wasting our lives on the infinite number of non-productive things we
could be doing, like toxicological pea testing or drilling core
samples under sidewalks as a precaution against sinkholes.

>    BTW: There is no leap of faith involved in the truck or meteor. We 
>know from experience that trucks DO enter backyard and that meotors DO 
>fall on them. That experience also tells us that the event is very, 
>very, very rare and thus you can sit in your backyard relatively sure 
>that a truck carrying a meteor fragment won't suddenly end up in your 
>lap.

A giant radioactive turtle, then. Nobody I know of has ever been
crushed by or seen anyone crushed by a giant radioactive turtle in
their back yards, and yet I feel confident enough to sit in my back
yard without undue fear of being crushed by one . . .

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                                                  
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