Atheism
From BibleWiki
Atheism is the lack of belief in a god. Atheists therefore do not believe in God or any other religion, and base their beliefs off of observation through the scientific method. Atheism is not to be confused with Agnosticism, which is the belief that it is impossible to determine whether there is a God.
[edit] Types of Atheism
Atheists separate the semantically the positions "lack of belief in deity" from "there is no god", defining them as Weak and Strong Atheism respectively. Some atheist authors, including Richard Dawkins, prefer to categorize atheists, theists and agnostics, based on the probability they assign to the statement "God exists"; typically Christians and other religions classify atheists in this way as well.
[edit] Arguments for defining atheism as a belief
All types of atheists develop their worldview based on science. Unfortunately, science is a moving target: If science hasn't proved something, it's possible that it just hasn't been proven or discovered yet, or that science is just wrong. Science once taught that fire was the element wikipedia:Phlogistin, which was eventually disproved. Science has it's own viewpoint on the origins of the Earth, but as taught by science, if we keep asking questions about our origins according to science, we eventually run into a roadblock. Here's the answers as taught by science:
- Where did humans come from? We evolved from other lifeforms.
- Where did life come from? It was created when lightning stuck some amino acids and created a bacteria.
- Where did the world come from? The big bang.
- Where did the universe come from? The big bang.
- Where did the original materials for the universe come from?
Science doesn't have an answer to this question.
- Where did the scientific laws governing physics, chemistry and biology come from?
Science doesn't have the answer to this question either. At some point everyone must believe something: Christians believe God created all these things, while atheists believe the matter, and scientific laws always existed.
