Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:46 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 22, 2025 1:27 am
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Oct 22, 2025 12:42 am
If they know with certainty that there is a God, then they would be liar to be an atheist, however, not being able to disprove something doesn't necessarily make one a liar.
No...it makes one an agnostic. But nothing will warrant Atheism. So the former is at least being honest, even if all he's honest about is not knowing anything about it. But the latter...well, claiming to know that is something one can only do by lying.
I suppose a person typically has faith that there is a God, not faith that there isn't a God. Or they might be angry and pessimistic and assume there's no God for whatever reason. However, knowing is a whole different matter.
Yes, that's very true.
The irony is that the Atheist isn't a man without a faith; he actually has faith that something logic tells him he can never justify is still certain. And then he even has the faith, in many cases, to think he can tell others that they cannot have faith in God, because his faith in no evidence at all is more "intellectual" than their probabilistic evidence for God.
But Atheism isn't really a knowledge. It's a
wish, as you suggest. Richard Dawkins, for example, freely admits he did not come to his Atheism as an adult biologist, but rather as a 17-year-old, who then obviously had no academic training at all. And though his faith was the faith of a 17-year-old, he now confidently pronounces that God is a "delusion," and that other people should disbelieve in God. But why should a the wish of a 17-year-old be compulsory to anybody else?
Whatever justification he thinks he has subsequently uncovered, he was clearly guilty of what so many Atheists since Freud have accused Theists of -- namely, a "wish-fulfillment fantasy." Christians, he says, believe because they
want there to be a God; but Dawkins disbelieves because he
doesn't want there to be one. And that exposes just how poor the whole wish-fulfillment criticism actually is: it really doesn't favour a side at all...rather, it's a kind of
ad hominem that can be tacked on to any ideological position at all, and really fails to tell us anything about the justifiability of the position. It's a handle for every pot, but not necessary for any.