From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: All Hail Huge Blue Banana (was: Do Atheists Have Their Own "Faith"?)
Date: 13 Apr 92 11:02:22 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England

In article <s4vgsINNols@chester.ksu.ksu.edu> yohan@chester.ksu.ksu.edu (Jonathan W Newton) writes:

> When you say: "As I have no proof that there is a "god" I will continue
> to believe there is none", isn't that the same position theists take?

No, it isn't the same thing at all. It's called the null hypothesis.

> By this reasoning, theists are right in saying they will believe in God
> until someone proves otherwise (although I would argue that they have
> the burden of proof).

Not sure that your sentence is logically self-consistent, but anyway...
If your hypothetical theist is going to believe in god X until somebody
proves that god X doesn't exist, then s/he is logically compelled to
believe in all hypothesised (or even hypothesisable!) entities (gods
included) until each is respectively proven not to exist.

Imagine frantic Blues-Brothers-esque characters wearing serious shades:

  "The universe *might* be the work of a huge blue banana hiding in a higher
   dimension inaccessible to us and thus untestable!!".

  "Shit, better build *another* church".

The intellectual consequences are a nightmare, especially if one such
hypothesised god would roast you in hell for believing in another, for
example. Or how about one who would roast you in hell for believing in *it*?
Think about it. Ooooeerr....

Have a look at the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file for this group,
which deals with a logical construct known as Pascal's Wager, of which
this is a variant. It might also answer some of your other questions.

> Maybe this is nit-picking, but only when you have proof can you have
> faith in OR deny God. I see nothing wrong with living your life as if
> God does not exist until you have proof (and after reading your
> response [to someone else - sc], this seems to be your main point), but
> denying the possibility of God, in mind as well as action, seems to be
> a position backed up with little fact. That is blind faith.

Most atheists do not, I think, utterly deny the *possibility* that some
god/s exist/s, in a philosophical sense.  Most folks on this group would
probably agree (sorry if I'm wrong, dudes...) that it's a moot question.
However, there comes a point (there did for me, anyway) where one simply
*does* decide that, if I might use the analogy again, the

  "huge blue banana hiding in a higher dimension
   inaccessible to us and thus untestable"

is assigned a probability of existence of z where z is so close to zero
as makes no difference except in a very rarified philosophical atmosphere.

If you're familiar with probability theory, it's kind of similar to
saying that the banana doesn't exist "with probability 1", or about
the same probability as getting at least one head from tossing a
fair coin an arbitrarily large number of times. It isn't *philosophically*
the same thing as ruling out the existence of the banana, but *practically*
it is.

That's how I rationalise *my* "jump" from a-theism to athe-ism, or from
not(believe(god)) to believe(not(god)) as somebody expressed it recently.
Others will doubtless differ, but I hope it helps.

> Jon NEwton


Cheers

Simon
-- 
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