Something regarding atheism vs religion - not sure yet

Let me give some background. This is my screen name in several places online, including at "freethoughtblogs.com/axp/". I am in no way affiliated with The Atheist Experience nor the Atheist Community of Austin. I am a mere regular commenter. One day, Mike hired a service to promote his website, and that service posted several comments to The Atheist Experience blog. (That's the stored given to me by Mike in email.) Here is the post. http://freethoughtblogs.com... The posts invited people to come to Mike's blog, IIRC in the interests of feedback and I assumed debate, and I went there and posted some counter-arguments to the claims on Mike's blog. I am unable to find links to these posts at this time. That led to an email exchange, which has thus far culminated in this. I am not sure what to expect out of this. Mike asked me to start this debate. I gave a brief description of my general position, and Mike said that would be fine as an opening statement for the debate. For the record, I think it not important who "wins" the debate. Victory in a debate like this is not a good measure of truth nor accuracy. IMHO, my position is simple, straightforward, and common. I do not pretend to speak for all atheists, nor a majority of atheists, but IMHO my views are common in the atheist communities, especially the one's that I would defend. I am a humanist. I value the safety, freedom, self determination, happiness, material wealth, and so on, of people, of humans, and of other intelligent non-human animals. I am a scientist - in the sense that I use science and that I advocate for the use of science. When I say this, I advocate both a narrow view of science as something done by professional scientists, and a broad view of science that includes all proper rational thinking based on evidence. I am an atheist. Words do not have intrinsic meaning. Words do not have immutable definitions. Words and language have meaning only insofar as there is consensus and agreement on the meanings of words. I use the definition of "atheist" which is IMO the most common usage by far in the community of people who identify as "atheist". An atheist is simply someone who lacks a positive belief in the assertion that there is a god or gods. Someone who believes that there are no gods is an atheist. Someone who is undecided on the issue is an atheist. Someone who says "I do not know" on the issue is an atheist. I am also a strong atheist - in the following sense. IMHO, there is no clear meaning to the term "strong atheist", and I do not purport to give one here. Merely, I wish to express my strong confidence, my strong belief, that all of the gods of popular human religions do not exist. This is a positive assertion, and by making it I bear the cultural convention known as the "burden of proof". However, for other god hypotheses, especially the god hypotheses that are carefully tailored to be untestable, such as first cause gods and deist gods, my position is that "I do not know, and you do not either". What I mean by that is that I believe I do not have sufficient evidence at my disposal - any evidence really - for or against a deist god, and I also believe on the basis of strong evidence that you very likely do not have any better evidence than I that would be for or against a deist god. I am also a skeptic. This should be part of being a scientist, but let me call it out specifically here. Almost everything I believe, if not everything I believe, is open to doubt. I am not absolutely certain about anything. When I say "I believe X is true" or "I know X is true" or "I am certain X is true", I am merely using colloquial shorthand, and when pressed, I will immediately clarify by stating that everything I know and believe might be wrong, and I am always open to future evidence and argument to change my mind. However, it should also be said that while I might lack absolute confidence, I might have extremely high confidence. My confidence that the Sun will rise tomorrow is extremely high, so high that for all practical purposes I do not question it, and I base my life on the premise that it's true. I believe in the is-ought distinction, often attributed to Hume. In short, no amount of observation about the world should be enough by itself to convince you that you ought to take some action, or that you should take some action, or that it is morally right to take some action. You always need some starting moral principles, such as humanism, or perhaps extreme selfish egoism. Once you have some starting moral principles, then science can evaluate the efficacy of plans at achieving your goals, and observing the world become extremely necessary in order to help you achieve your goals. With starting moral premises, you can use observations from the world to deduce additional moral claims. What often matters to me is not the belief itself, but the justification of the belief. I do not respect beliefs. I respect the person's justifications for their beliefs. However, requiring justifications quickly leads to a problem known by many names, such as the regress problem, or the M"nchhausen trilemma. If you assent that you should strive towards holding distinct analyzable beliefs and justifications, then it's formally provable that you will hit the M"nchhausen trilemma. I happen to prefer the axiomatic approach, specifically a closely related approach called foundherentism. What I mean by that is this: I have a very, very small collection of beliefs, my foundation, which may be mutually reinforcing, and with those beliefs and observation, I can logically deduce all of my other beliefs. Some of those foundational principles are: having the values of humanism, having the values of science, having the values of skepticism, rejecting Last Thursdayism and other forms of solipsism, and so forth. It needs to be stressed that my strong atheism is not foundational. It is not true that I believe there are no gods on faith. Rather, My strong atheism is the result of the application of science and reasoning on my available evidence which strongly indicates that all of the gods of popular conception do not exist. I am a skeptic, and this conclusion, while strongly held, is tentative. In fact, I am willing to name specific hypothetical evidence which if found would convince me that a god exists, and in particular that the Christian god exists and is real. I would no longer be an atheist. (Note: "All-powerful", "all-knowing", etc., is not a necessary component of my current working definition of "god" nor "Christian god".) Finally, to be extremely provocative, it is an entirely coherent possibility that I could be convinced that the Christian god exists and is real. I would not label myself an atheist. However, I would still not label myself a Christian. I would still be a humanist, and my valuing of human life, happiness, etc., would force me to take part in research programs on this incredible threat and menace to human life and well-being, in order to find a way to neutralize the threat. If Stargate SG-1 has taught me anything, it is that the proper response to an evil god is not to bow down and worship, but to blow it up. Nuke god! I'm sure many readers will say that's silly and we could never blow up god. My answer is that the goa'uld said the same thing, and we blew them up. We even blew up the Ori (with help). We'll never know if we can blow up god until we try. To parody Nietzsche, if the Christian god existed, then it would be necessary to destroy it. I am also a materialist. This is a conclusion deduced from science, reason, and the available evidence. I suggest googling for Carl Sagan's garage dragon parable from his book "The Demon Haunted World" for a start of what evidence I would present to defend this assertion. In particular, our knowledge of mind and brain has gotten to the point where we can say conclusively that there is no immaterial soul which persists after brain-death, and there is no immaterial soul which has any meaningful part of cognition. We have a plethora of cases of accidental brain damage and the effects on the mind. For example, with certain brain damage, you lose the ability to recognize faces. With a certain other kind of brain damage, you lose the ability to string together a proper English sentence, but you can still understand English. With a certain other kind of brain damage, you lose the ability to understand English, but you can still string together proper English sentences and speak them. With a certain other kind of brain damage, there's a strong propensity to become a habitual gambler. With a certain other kind of brain damage, you lose the ability to form memories. For every part of your mind, there is a corresponding part of the brain that we can destroy. It is incredibly foolish to think that any of you remains after brain death, and that you will be able to go to heaven, speak to grandma, understand grandma, remember grandma, be able to recognize grandma's face, etc. Finally, our knowledge of physics leaves no room for the soul. We know how neural impulses lead to muscle contraction, and how that can lead to speech and action of the body. If you believe that there is an immaterial soul that does something, it necessarily entails the assertion that the soul interacts with particles in the brain (or body) to do something that would not otherwise happen by the materialist laws of physics. That in principle is detectable. We have good evidence it's not there. For further reading on this topic, I suggest Daniel Dennett and Sean Carroll. For example: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com... Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality - Sean Carroll - Skepticon 5