Questions for Atheists

Are you saying that, given naturalistic explanations for Hurricane Katrina and its devastation of New Orleans, these explanations are not "a logical proof over a supernatural alternative", such as: "God sent Katrina to punish the sinful people of New Orleans"?What other "logical" reasons would there be for maintaining "a supernatural alternative" explanation when we can determine a naturalistic one that is detailed, motivated by repeated observations, and useful for making better-than-chance predictions about future conditions and events?And regarding a later post: You aren't trying to assert that religion (theism) does have some sort of scientific or logically sound backing, are you?Anyway, I think your assertion is very weak. An atheist (such as myself) can state a hypothesis like "There is no supernatural power that listens and attends to the prayers of individual people," and then check whether it's false by doing experiments, in which people are observed to pray for particular things ("within reason", of course!), and outcomes are tabulated. If the outcomes that were prayed for are actually found to occur significantly more often than would be expected by "mere chance", then the atheist's hypothesis would be falsified.I think that sort of experiment has been tried, in a variety of ways, and the atheist's hypothesis has not been falsified. There's something about this that strikes me as being somewhat scientific and logically sound. {--sniff--} I think I smell a lot of straw here... hmm, and I see it being arranged into a hominid form...If Dawkins doesn't argue it, yeah, "big deal" -- but I think you may also wrong about calling it a "common argument". Sure, you can still refute it, but what's the point of that?Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.Edited by Otto Tellick, : fixed grammarEdited by Otto Tellick, : yet more grammar repairs (I shouldn't be posting at this hour...)

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Open MInd:I'm not completely familiar with materialism, and in any case, I'm not sure I would judge it by the definition you gave. But there is certainly nothing in atheism that would inherently deny things like free will, purpose, ethics, charity, love, and other "emergent properties" of a self-aware and social species. Changes of opinions do happen as a result of environmental influence -- perhaps more often for atheists than for theists, but that probably depends on the topic -- and this in itself is not a bad thing. In many situations, it indicates a useful ability to adapt. But don't forget that, even while I'm changing my opinions, I will be asserting my own changes to affect the environment that I happen to be in. And it should be the case that this works both ways: I can manipulate others as well (unless they're just really obstinate). We're all on fairly equal footing when it comes to influencing and being influenced. Do you consider yourself to be different from the rest of us in this regard? If so, then that's where you are going wrong (maybe you're just being obstinate), and it's diminishing the worth of your own opinions.

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.