Thursday, October 9, 2008

Kudos to the Barefoot Bum

For tackling the Atheist or Agnostic issue, and doing it in a much more concise and to-the-point way than my own attempt.

2 comments:

Larry Hamelin said...

<bows> I do my best.

I enjoy philosophy, and I can split hairs with the best of them. And I've found that when you've split all the hairs and examined the issue from all sides, we know there's no God just as confidently that we know that things fall when you drop them.

Hydra said...

I suppose. But then one is faced with the awkward question of explaining how one knows that no Gods exist while simultaneously bombarded with increasingly vague and invisible definitions of God.

I've found it's easier just to avoid knowledge claims altogether and make the point that the kinds of Gods that are claimed to exist are so incredibly unlikely, absurd, or self-contradictory that in the absence of any supporting evidence, it's effectively a dead hypothesis.

It's sort of like dealing with astrology - you don't have to bother dismantling it point by point if you can make the case that the starting premises are unsound.