Why I'm an atheist

[sarahmichigan]

This is going to be kind of anti-climactic since I've been thinking on it for a while and leading up to it, and yet it's going to be short. But here goes.

I'm an atheist because I think the burden of proof is on those who believe in ANY kind of supernatural phenomena. As far as I can tell, material, natural explanations explain the world and how it works and how it came into being just fine.

To me, positing a Higher Being (especially the more specific you get about what this being is like) to explain things is like saying that tiny black fairies contort their bodies to show the time on my digital watch rather than relying on naturalistic, material explantions about electricity and such.

Now, I understand why some people have an intuition that there just MUST be something bigger than us that created the world. That's fine, and I can understand that. (I have trouble figuring out, sometimes, how people go from "some higher being" to "my specific sect or doctrine," but that's another subject.) However, I don't have that intuition.

I remember when I was taking philosophy courses at Western Michigan University, and sometimes the professor would ask, "What's your intuition about that statment or assertion?" This was in the context of many philosophical arguments, not just ones about the existence or non-existence of God. I remember thinking, "Intuition?! This is supposed to be a philosophy course, and not a New Age class about how to fine-tune your ESP."

But really, when it comes to belief in a higher being of some sort, I think a lot of us are going off our gut feeling. My gut says that only the material world exists, and there isn't anything "super" above the natural world. Any weirdness that can't be explained by science can usually be explained by psychology.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

Ah, okay. I think i understand.

I would certainly take issue with such a claim. Being the guy i am, i would probably just assume that the person was -- somewhere in their chain of logic -- making an assumption or relying on an axiom without remembering that such things are statements of faith in and of themselves, regardless of however high a degree they correspond to observable reality. Whether or not that constitutes "arrogance" i'll call a matter of definition at that point, but i believe i understand what you mean -- it can certainly come across as such.

I usually find that -- if they're willing to discuss it -- most folks will eventually boil their explanations down to just such a level, and that we can collectively identify which assumption is the root of their claim. At that point, they either accept that their assumption is exactly that and that maybe not all people share it, or claim that the assumption is an empirical conclusion that may as well be true. I can live with the latter, so long as the point is made that that is what we're dealing with, and not a hard fact.

In the end, i suppose there will always be some people who just can't get down with the idea and think other people are idiots because they can. That's the kind of intolerance (and yes, probably implicit arrogance) that i just need to consider a loss.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I think we would likely both agree that many statements which are, logically, implicitly arrogant often boil down to simple error which some people are able to recognise and a few are even able to admit. This is true whether the arguer is deist, atheist, or agnostic.

By "implicitly arrogant" I simply mean, that the argument depends on or implies the existence of power, ability, or unusual characteristics that the arguer is unlikely to have.

It's not really a big deal.