Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

From a pragmatic position, it is a very good idea to limit your philosophy. That is the entire purpose of any epistemology, to start with a set number of axioms that are necessarily fewer than all possible axioms.As an example, a crime scene investigator comes across a body with a hole in it, and a bullet lodged in a wall nearby. Should we limit ourselves and only consider the idea that a bullet passed through the body and lodged in the wall, or should we delimit ourselves and equally consider the possibility that the world was created 2 microseconds ago with the dead body and lodged bullet already in place? Most would lean towards the epistemology that would assume that the past is not faked, and that we can trust what we see.Also, the conclusion of a creator can be separate from the epistemology. It's not that atheists can not consider the existence of a creator. Rather, the evidence for a creator fails within the epistemology held by that atheist. So, in fact, atheists do consider a creator but find the evidence lacking.Compare this to the creationist epistemology where the conclusion is considered an axiom. A universe without a creator can not be considered. Creationists have adopted an epistemology that is quite different from that of atheists, and quite different from the epistemology that we use in our regular day to day lives (e.g. the murder scene analogy above).I would agree that we are all limited by the epistemology that we adopt. The argument comes down to which epistemology is the best. Creationists have largerly answered this question for us. By arguing that creationism is science, the "atheist" epistemology, they are trying to increase the persuasiveness of creationism by adopting the better epistemology, or at least pretending to. If the faith based epistemology of christianity were truly better then they would not feel the need to adopt the banner of science. Rather, they would tout the benefits of the faith based epistemology.To put it in simpler terms, if faith based beliefs (creationism) are superior to scientific claims ("atheist" claims) then why do creationists fight so hard to have creationism called science? Why the need to have ID/creationism taught in science class? You don't see a widespread movement by scientists to have evolution presented as a religious, faith based belief, do you?

This is where the history of science comes in. At one point there were two camps, the Rationalists and the Empricists. A decent breakdown can be found here. Rationalists argued that by applying human reason one could ferret out the truth without need to rely on our sense experiences. The Empiricists argued that you must test these ideas against sense experience where these observations trumping our rationale. In Empirical thought, no matter how solid or logical the reasoning may be, if it contradicts sense experience then it is thrown out.If you think about it, it is easy to see why Empiricism beat out Rationalism. If we stuck to Rationalism we would never suggest that light can act as both a wave and a particle. What Empiricism works around is our inherent biases, our expectations of what is true and not true. That's just it. Much of what we know has been learned through Empiricism, not Rationalism. The answer was not in our head. It was out in the physical world. How so? How is reason outside of the brain? You seem to be using the Ontological Argument, the most famous example being the idea that unicorns really exist because we can form the image of one in our head. That is, unicorns have to exist outside of the human brain because we are able to form the mental image of one.

But what step in judging beauty are neurons not involved? If we took away a person's brain are they still able to judge beauty?It would seem to me that the ability to judge beauty is an emergent property of the material, physical brain. In fact, our every attempt at modeling human intelligence has involved the manipulation of some physical medium like semiconductors. Reasoning is something we do like football, skydiving, or napping. Reason is the agreed upon rules for the activity just as football has rules. I don't see anyone claiming that football is immaterial, so I don't see why reason would be any different.

Rationalism may be involved in inspiration, but it is not involved in the gaining of knowledge. The path of science is littered with ideas born of rational thought and tossed out through empiricism. If you were using Rationalism then you would not need the double slit experiment or the results of the experiment. That's the whole point. This contradicts what you said before:"We can see the reaction in the brain when reasoning takes place but isn't that just like this computer. It took reason outside of itself for it to be able to compute."If I am not mistaken, you are arguing that Reason is a thing that exists outside of our brains. Am I wrong?

Without going too in-depth into neurobiology, I highly doubt that the inputs could ever be the same. Your emotional state from one moment to the next is not the same, and that is one of the inputs. As we have been discussing in this thread, there are many schools of Reason, each having their own rules (i.e. epistemology). It is no different than football, IMHO.

There is a story written by men that depends on there being ignorance of the natural world. Yes, something we can't detect, something we are ignorant of, and something you have no intention of every supporting with evidence. This is exactly the problem that AZPaul3 is talking about.There are several more instances where demonstrate just how right AZPaul3 is. I can quote them if you want?

That's because the creationist arguments are contradicted by the facts that science has discovered. It has nothing to do with the patience, intelligence, or number of creationists. It has to do with the evidence. I view it quite differently. You don't want science to test the supernatural because you wouldn't like the outcome. The supernatural is a realm that theists have invented so that their beliefs can not be questioned. You want to pretend that you can make grand claims, and then not allow a single person to question them. That is why the supernatural exists. You never think of looking at the evidence found in biology?

If the article on the "10 Terrible Effects of Caffeine" was based on several well established clinical trials, and the "10 Benefits of Caffeine" was based on the testimony of a 2,000 year old man who claimed that Zeus told him of those 10 benefits, which would you go with? How much time would you seriously considered the prophet of Zeus compared to the hard scientific evidence?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

First, you say . . .

quote:

---

Science, by definition, is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."

---

Then you say . . .

quote:

---

Science, by definition, only tests the natural world.

---

Notice how the two definitions do not match up. The first definition makes zero mention of the natural world. It is YOU that is arbitrarily splitting the world into areas that you will allow science to test claims, and areas that you won't let science test claims. You and only you are drawing this line. Talk about your lazy assumptions. . .Why can't science analyze claims about deities? Just because you say it can't? You are right. It is probably not in your favor to judge religious belief on the basis of reason and evidence. I will grant you that much.

The Bible says that there is was a recent global flood. We can test for that.The Bible says that life was created 6,000 years ago in separate events. We can test for that.Christians claim that God heals them through prayer. We can definitely test for that to see if prayer protects people from getting sick.Look at all of the scientific theories that people claim must be false in order for their god to exist and for their religious texts to be true.Perhaps the most revealing test of all is to watch theists deny that any test could detect the supernatural. In order for no test to be applicable, it would mean that the supernatural would have no effect on the world around us. They are, in essence, fighting over a realm that has no bearing on ours at all. It might as well not exist since non-existence and existence are indistinguishable.At the end of the day, the supernatural is an invented term that theists use to protect their claims from the normal process of testing and falsification. Imagine if I said that my beliefs were not testable because they are French. Would that make sense? Guess what? It doesn't make sense when you claim that they are supernatural. Those would work fine for me.At the end of the day, if the actions of the supernatural are indistinguishable from natural processes, then we have demonstrated that the supernatural does not exist on one extreme, or completely superfluous and irrelevant on the other side of the spectrum. Take you pick. You can stop there. Something doesn't become true because you want it to be true. That's not how reality works.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

We tend to look for a scientific explanation because doing so in the past has been extremely productive and helpful.We tend not to take supernatural claims that seriously because not one of them has ever turned out to be verifiably true.Given the track record of supernatural explanations, can you really blame us? Why should we keep using a method that has never worked? Even the proponents of supernatural explanations don't think it is worth their time or consideration. If they did think supernatural claims were worthwhile, they would be doing the research. They aren't. I think that says it all. When did having an open mind mean that we should consider faith based beliefs as being equal to evidenced science?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Is that why they give out communion during church service? Jesus gives you dry mouth and the munchies?

Ultimately, that is the hurdle that theism has to get over. In order to keep their beliefs from being challenged, they have made the supernatural so undetectable to science that it has become irrelevant and superfluous.It is the same as Sagan's invisible fire breathing dragon that lives in garages. The dragon doesn't change the world around us in any meaningful or measurable way, and yet people believe in the fire breathing dragons that live in their garages.

The difference is that we can show that those processes actually exist, and that the evidence is consistent with those processes. You can't say the same for a belief in deities.

If being philosophically free or unlimited means that I have to believe in bullshit, then I don't want to be philosophically free or unlimited. I think it is a GOOD thing to limit one's positive statements to those things that have positive evidence.What we are ultimately being accused of is not being gullible enough to believe in faith based deity claims.