How can you possibly be an athiest?

[Bosh]

If you mean atheists they don´t claim to "believe" in science. IIRC Atheism means the absence of belief in God, not neccessarily the belief in something else as substitute.

Exactly!
What often gets missed in these debates is the difference between Weak and Strong Belief. Weak Belief is basically "I'm pretty sure X is true since I've never seen any real evidence to the contrary" and Strong Belief is "I know absolutely that X is true, it is completely impossible for X to be wrong." Most atheists have a Weak Belief that God doesn't exist, which is a good thing since it is very stupid to have a strong belief in anything since you could be a brain in a jar and what you think is reality could be manufactured by scientists running tests on you, except what Hume calls "relationships of ideas" which are basically if/then statements like "if all the basic axioms of mathematics are true, then 2 + 2 = 4."

[Az]

I am not an atheist. I don't care about the whole issue. Even if god/gods/whatever exist it/they/he/she/whatever couldn't care less about what I do.

[Spiffor]

Oh, and just for the record

"Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes in the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Azazel
I am not an atheist. I don't care about the whole issue. Even if god/gods/whatever exist it/they/he/she/whatever couldn't care less about what I do.

Well, I´d say if God exists, he wouldn´t like to be ignored by you...

[ranskaldan]

There's no such thing as "taking a side" in this issue. I believe whatever has the highest probability of being true - and I believe it as much as that probability.

Since science seems to work in the same way as I do, hence I trust science more. Religion, on the other hand, does not work in the same way as I do, so I do not trust it.

Science does not assert the existence or nonexistence of a deity. There is absolutely no evidence pointing either way. Hence I consider it arrogant to "believe" in either case in the face of zero evidence. That makes me agnostic.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Oh, and just for the record

"Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes in the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

[Bosh]

That makes me agnostic.

Not really, as Lovecraft puts it:

"I certainly can't see any sensible position to assume aside from that of complete scepticism tempered by a leaning toward that which existing evidence makes most probable. All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world , or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligble moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance's of theism's truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.

[Zero]

Im a deist.

That way if there is a god, no matter which one, I can get half a point for believing in him/her/them.

[SlowwHand]

That makes you a wimp.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Oh, and just for the record

"Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes in the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

i second the

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by St Leo
Well, it can explain everything in this Universe and that's good enough for me.

But don't you see that believing in that assumption is as sceintifically unfounded as a belief in God? You just have faith in a different religion.

[MRT144]

Josh, the difference i see though is that science is more dynamic in its ability to change and thats what seperates it from religion. thats one of the things that makes religions unique is that their core ideas and beliefs dont change over a large amount of time.

and thats why when it comes to matters where belief in god might be percieved to conflict with science i choose science simply because scientific thought allows the theory to change over time to be most objective rather than never changing to uphold the legitimacy of the religion.

[Spiffor]

I'm with Josh on this one.

MRT : religion is adaptable too. Religion has been tweaked by priests since its very existence, and it continues to be tweaked with the various interpretations of the holy books. The holy books are an object of study and analysis for religious people, just like gravity is an object of study and analysis for physicists.
You wouldn't say "science cannot evolve because gravity has always been the same and won't change", won't you ? It is the analysis of the gravity that changes. And it is the analysis of the holy books that changes too.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
But don't you see that believing in that assumption is as sceintifically unfounded as a belief in God? You just have faith in a different religion.

Rogan, your error lies in assuming that science is about a set of laws. It is not. Science is about a methodology, an approach to acquire knowledge of nature. Hence, I am not assuming the laws we have now are going to explain everything in this Universe, but without this approach, we cannot hope to do so one day.

[Stefu]

Every time someone asks this kind of a "How" questions (Fr. ex, well, "How can you possibly be an atheist?" instead of "Why are you an atheist?") I have a terrible urge to just snap my fingers repeatedly and say "Like this! See? See? See?"