From: mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Is atheism experimentally refutable?
Date: 1 Sep 92 18:06:01 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

In article <1992Sep1.140456.22729@st-andrews.ac.uk> nrp@st-andrews.ac.uk (Norman R. Paterson) writes:
>
>===== From Dave Hanley:
>>   The fine point you seem to miss is that atheism, in the sense most users
>> here use it IS NOT A BELIEF!  It is the LACK of one.  Therefore 'faith'
>> hardly gets involved.  Even the 'strong' atheist viewpoint should not be
>> classified such, because we can hardly be held responsible for every stupid
>> theory out there...  If you don't beleive that there are taffita lampcoveres
>> following you around, I'm hardly going to say that you are accepting that they
>> do not exist on faith.  Ditto for god, thought I find the taffita lampcovers
>> more likely, interesting, and amusing.
>I think you are drawing a false distinction between a belief and a lack of a belief.  That is, 
>I think you are distinguishing "I believe there is no god" from "I do not believe there is a 
>god."  But I don't think there is a distinction.  Each seems to imply the other.  For example, 
>what is the difference between "I believe there are no lampshades following me" implies "I do 
>not believe there are any lampshades following me," and vice versa.  So they are equivalent.  

I think not, and present here a thought experiment to illustrate why
not. Let us assume for the sake of argument that you are sitting
in a chair before something equivalent to a terminal (if you are
not then we can imagine conducting this thought experiment at
some time when you are). Now, without looking beneath your
chair, consider the statement "there are exactly 4 visible pieces
of lint under your chair". Do you believe this is definitely true? If not,
do you believe that it is definitely not true? In any case, I
think it is clear that you could very well believe neither that
it is true nor that it is not true; in fact, in the
moment before you digested the text in which I asked the question
you very likely had no particular belief at all about the number
of visible pieces of lint under your chair, and I would consider it
superfluous to formulate any belief about it in the absence of
evidence.

It would be true of me right now, for example, to say that I
don't believe that there are exactly 4 visible pieces of lint
under my chair. It would not be true, however, to say that
I believe there are not 4 visible pieces of lint under my chair.

>The only way I can see you might sustain your position is to say that an atheist takes the "I 
>do not believe" stance and then refuses to make the mental deduction to the "I believe" 
>position.  But that would be rather weak.
>But I agree we are not responsible for every stupid theory out there!

I don't think it's especially weak. I do not believe that
the god described by the Bible exists in the same sense that,
let us say, I believe San Francisco exists. It would be too strong,
however, and inaccurate, to say that I believe that such a
god definitely does not exist (I do, however, consider it unlikely
that such a being exists except as a metaphor for something
else).

>===== General continuation.
>It seems to me that atheists have *some* beliefs: mainly a belief in reasoned argument, 
>logical thought, that sort of thing.  Calling this set of axioms or a set of working 
>hypotheses is merely changing the name.  The idea of refutation depends on these beliefs, but 
>that does not mean that they cannot be refuted.  If you were able to show, by reasoned 
>argument, that any system of reasoned argument was self-contradictory, then you'd not be able 
>to claim belief in reasoned argument alone.  You could, for example, allow yourself to believe 
>several contradictory or meaningless things at once.

The problem with your formulation is that atheism per se is not
any specific belief or set of beliefs. A person who had no belief
in reasoned argument, but who lacked belief in any god, would
be an atheist, for example. It is plausible that atheists all have
some beliefs (though not logically necessary), but it's conceivable
that no two atheists share any beliefs, or, more plausibly, that
any two atheists chosen randomly share no significant set of
beliefs beyond what would be expected in any two randomly chosen
people. Atheism isn't an 'ism' in the usual sense; it is simply
a feature of some people's sets of ideas about the world (that
feature being nothing more than a lack of belief in the
existence of a deity or deities).

>But this is not the original question: what experimental evidence would refute atheism?

A direct encounter with a presence that the individual atheist
would unhesitatingly regard as a god. To be more specific
would require a description of what some particular atheist
would regard as defining qualities of a god; these defining
qualities might well vary from one atheist to the next.