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Line 29: − − == Atheism and Agnosticism == − − Atheism and agnosticism are logically distinct concepts. Whilst atheist reject the existence of a god or gods, agnostics do not do so. [[Richard Dawkins]] has contrasted the two positions as follows: − − :“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”. − − An agnostic is on the fence regarding the truth value of certain unverifiable claims. It can be said that an agnostic thinks that there's about a 50-50 chance of a claim being true. For example, if you asked me if it's going to rain in a week, I'd say I was agnostic. I just don't know, but it's definitely likely and possible. It's rained before and it will probably rain again. I've observed it many times so it's a reasonable conclusion that it ''may'' rain next week. − − If a claim is arbitrary and has no method of verification, we must be atheistic about it. Anyone can be creative and invent some sort of imaginary circumstance. It doesn't make it true; it just makes it creative. This is excellent for the arts, a field in which subjective flights of fancy are valued and no objective verification is required for a claim to be valuable. If there are fairies at the bottom of the well, a Flying Spaghetti monster, supernatural gods that act as proxies for our human weaknesses, and other creative phenomena, we cannot take them seriously as actually having independent existence. What stops anyone from inventing a religion then which makes that person the center of the universe? How can his be disproved? If that person is emphatic enough, his creativity can morph into dogma due to psychosocial processes that have been observed throughout the history of mass belief. Scientology and Mormonism are only recent examples of this. − − For example, even people who ascribe to a religious belief that is premised on faith in facts or events that they have no specific experience with are atheists regarding ''other'' religions. They regard the tenets of other religions as if they were arbitrary heresay that could only be believed by a gullible fool. The irony here is striking. − − A full on atheist evaluates an individual claims on its face. If it seems arbitrary, then he/she is an atheist about it. If it's likely, but not easily verified, then he/she's agnostic. And if it's based on something that resonates with common sense or has been consistently true in the past, then he/she has ''faith'' that it'll probably be true in the future. − −
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Atheism is disbelief in the existence of a [[God|god]] or gods, or any supernatural entity.
Atheism is disbelief in the existence of a [[God|god]] or gods.
Some Atheists are tied with [[Secular Humanism]]. Popularly-known Atheists include [[Stephen Hawking]], [[Stephen Jay Gould]], [[Carl Sagan]], [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Douglas Adams]], [[William Borden]] and [[Sam Harris]].
Some Atheists are tied with [[Secular Humanism]]. Popularly-known Atheists include [[Stephen Hawking]], [[Stephen Jay Gould]], [[Carl Sagan]], [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Douglas Adams]], [[William Borden]] and [[Sam Harris]].
A number of responses to this logical paradox have been put forth including those which assert human ignorance as the culprit, the concept of free will and the specific writings in some faiths which discuss the co-existence of good and evil (such as the book of Job in the Christian and Jewish faiths).[http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evil-log.htm]
A number of responses to this logical paradox have been put forth including those which assert human ignorance as the culprit, the concept of free will and the specific writings in some faiths which discuss the co-existence of good and evil (such as the book of Job in the Christian and Jewish faiths).[http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evil-log.htm]
==External Links==
==External Links==