Fundamental Atheism and the Conflicting Ideas Problem.

contracycle, who may or may not be a fundamentalist atheist, has one thing in his favour. It is that he is correct. contracycle pointed out that atheism has no tenets (your word). Therefore there are no fundamentalist atheists. an atheist may be an atheist simply because he woke up one morning following a dream in which he was told to be an atheist, and followed the advice. You don't need to have any rational justification for being an atheist. Being an atheist doesn't necessarily require rationality.What you are talking about is a fundamentalist sceptic. now a sceptic does indeed have tenets. Being an atheist may follow from fundamentalist scepticism, but it is possible to be an atheist without being a sceptic.There are tenets to being a sceptic. They include, for example, the idea that you should radically distrust logical statements which are non-sequiturs.A logical statement takes the form,if X then Y.Theists often put rather odd things in place of X and Y.If I don't know whether God exists, then God exists.
If God exists, then he is love.
If life is complex, then God created it.
etc. etc.A non-sceptical atheist might say:
If I don't know whether god exists, then God doesn't exist.(no better than the theist)A sceptic is rather different. He says:If I don't know whether God exists, then I will distrust the proposition that God exists.Being a sceptic is all about DISTRUST. If you are an atheist, you may well have been led to that viewpoint on the basis of your fundamentalist scepticism. But in that case, the "fundamentalist atheist" does NOT use "the same kinds of arguments that a fundamental YEC uses". This is because the atheist is a radical sceptic, while the YEC is a radical believer.The YEC can believe anything he likes, whereas the sceptic can disbelieve anything he likes.hope this helps,mick

I'd still like to get back the idea of scepticism. Okay, atheism is defined as the belief that there is no god. But if atheism arises from scepticism, then it is much more than just that. It is just one prong of the wider belief that there are no fairies, angels, leprechauns, unicorns, dragons, etc. The god part of it is just one part of scepticism that you happen to be concerned with.Atheism that is based in scepticism is far superior to theism in that it is at least a consistent world view. As a theist, you have basically no idea of which god to believe in. you can believe in allah on monday, jesus on tuesday, odin on wednesday, and all of the above for the rest of the week. An atheist, on the other hand, will tend to find that his beliefs are consistent with the rest of his intellectual outlook and his experience of the universe, from monday to sunday. it's a nice feeling, you should try it!mick

Are YOU agnostic about Venus, the Godess of Love? I mean are you agnostic about her existence as a deity? If not, why not? If so, are there any deities that you do not believe may exist?

Okay, I think I've worked out the problem. I agree with the first sentence - as an atheist I hold certain opinions to be literally true. It's the second part that is the problem. The reason that the fundamental theist is irrational/illogical is because he holds an opinion despite evidence suggesting that his opinion is unwarranted.this is what makes the atheist "better" (at least in terms of his rationality) than the theist - the atheist is typically punished for holding opinions that are unwarranted. Whereas the theist is rewarded for doing so.That's why the opinions of atheists are often far more worthy than the opinions of theists.mick

razd, I said that his opinion is unwarranted, not refuted. It's unwarranted, unnecessary, extraneous. Same as UFOs.

I don't know anything about dark matter and dark energy. I rely on the scientific method and the rigour of the physicist community to ensure that such hypotheses are treated appropriately. for this reason I feel comfortable in keeping an open mind on these issues. But i certainly couldn't point at any data or analyses that indicate their existence, so I can't say that I am sure they exist. I am totally reliant on the vigilance of the academic community to do that job on my behalf.There doesn't appear to be a rigorous scientific community who support the existence of UFOs, angels, devils, God and pixies, so I can't keep an open mind on those issues. I am not aware of a group of people employing systematic framework of knowledge-gathering that might convince me to accept such hypotheses.mick

The topic (in the case of physical hypotheses) is safe because of the existence of the scientific method. When the topic is not safe, i.e. when no scientific method is being applied (as you say, when the topic doesn't fit my world view) scepticism seems to be the only reasonable response.