What Is The Positive Evidence For Atheism?

And I'll go back to my original dtatement: It doesn't matter what you think. When you're on this forum, you should use terminology as it's used on this forum. If you use the "pure sense of the term" instead of the accepted sense, you're just contributing to the confusion.We have enough problems with (young-earth) creationists and "cdesign proponentists" making up their own terminology and using the forty-seventh definition from the dictionary to back up their "pure sense of the term". If you want to communicate, you have to use terminology the way your audience understands it.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

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If given the choice between evolution and an Intelligent Designer with no middle ground I would probably opt for ID myself

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Why on earth would you do that?ID is intellectually bankrupt.

I don't dsiagree with that, but my point is when we talk about the general population believing things then we have to realize that the general population might have a different idea of what the terms mean which makes statistics meanigless. If I were to say that X% of people accept the premise of ID, it matters a great deal of what people think ID means. My view is that most people don't understand ID the way people on this forum do.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I am Theistic. Simply put it makes far more sense to me than Atheism. If evolution meant embracing Atheism then I would have to reject it. Fortunately that isn't the case.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

We're not talking about the general population.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

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If evolution meant embracing Atheism then I would have to reject it.

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Then that would make you willfully ignorant.That would mean you would reject reality in favor of religious belief.That would mean that your thought processes and reasoning, in that scenario, are no better than Hovind, or LindaLou.I guess, when it comes right down to it, you would rather deny reality than give up your susperstition.Wow. All I can say is, wow.And we wonder how people could think that flying planes into buildings would get them a ticket to heaven.

If you would take the time to read the thread you would see that it was. This is what Taz asked which precipitated the discussion.

Right. Flying airplanes into buildings eh. If evolution meant accepting Atheism then it would no longer be scientific. Science is agnostic. Period. Dawkins says that "evolution leads to Atheism". You may call it willfull ignorance if you like but when Dawkins trys to make science atheistic he is no longer talking science and I have no problem rejecting his distortion of evolution for Theism.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Only if you think it's self-evident that God is beyond gross scientific analysis.I don't see any reason to believe that's true. I don't think the believers even really believe it. They certainly champion the results of any scientific study that seems to indicate God's existence, or the power of prayer, or whathaveyou; it's only in the face of all the disconfirming evidence that God suddenly, somehow, becomes beyond all reach of rational inquiry.

Can you explain to me how you think a study on prayer can be done scientifically? They are utter nonsense.Scientific results can be used to indicate either position. For example, Dawkins thinks evolution leads to Atheism whereas Collins calls it "The Language of God". What disconfirming evidence?

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The same way any double-blind medical study is done. Separate the afflicted into two groups. Have a prayer group pray for the recovery of the individuals of one of the groups. Don't let either test group know which one is being prayed for (to eliminate placebo effect.) Treat them the same, otherwise.Either one group will recover statistically significantly faster than the other, or they won't.It's noteworthy that prayer never seems to pass this rigorous test. One of them has better arguments than the other. For instance, all the stuff that goes on that's inconsistent with the idea of a benevolent, powerful, interested deity. All the stuff that fails to happen. If this is a universe created by God to house the only living creatures he's really interested in, why is that universe so resolutely hostile to us, to life in general?I could go on, and Dawkins does, in his book. There's a lot of reasons not to believe in God that believers have never been able to address.

I did read the thread. In Message 193, Taz wrote:

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I could have sworn you're an IDist.

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There follows a discussion about the equivalence of creationisn and IDism, in which nobody but you has been talking about your wishy-washy definitions.Nobody has been co-opting terms but you. You've been attempting to make "creationist" and "design" completely meaningless.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

Do you really think that prayer done as part of a test like that really counts as prayer. Let's all get together and manipulate God. Prayer is not about trying to beg God into doing our will, although I suppose that is the common perception. We agree there. Collins is very convincing isn't he? If this world is such a terrible place then why isn't everyone committing suicide? It seems to me that the good far outweighs the bad. Also as a Christian I believe in the recreation of this world at the time of new creation. This isn't all there is.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

That wasn't the post I was replying to. I'll try again. This is the post that I was referring to where Taz asks about how many creationists do I know that have misconceptions and my point is that most of the people I've met don't have the same understanding of what these terms mean as do the posters on this forum.Here. Try reading it again.

I know it wasn't. I was going back to the origin of the conversation. And my point is that you're the only one with that point of view. If you expect to communicate with people on this forum, you can't tell them that they're "co-opting" the terminology.I don't know what you think you're accomplishing by repeating Taz's quote. He asked you to clarify your point of view. I've never disputed what was being asked. I'm just saying that everybody but you seems to be on the same page with respect to terminology.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels