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But hasn't the purpose of religion always been to fill in the gaps in human understanding

Nope. That's a myth. ;-) Religion serves a great many purposes, of which explaining the natural world is sometimes a small part. In Christianity, specifically, it is almost no part. On the other hand, Christianity spends a lot of time talking about the purpose of life, about which science has little to say.

(albeit with unfounded/illogical assumptions)?

I'll infer that you consider the existence of God to be the primary illogical or unfounded assumption. After all, a "rational" person should never believe in anything until it is proven, right? Except rational people believe in plenty of things that are not proven, foremost being Reason itself. Another example would be the existence of the universe. Oh, does that sound silly? Let me rephrase it, then: the belief that we are not living in the Matrix. These beliefs cannot be proven. They are axioms. You can accept or reject an axiom, but not through pure reasoning.

God is an axiom.

Our notion of a "rational," "intelligent," "educated" person is of one who accepts the axioms of Reason, the axiom that the universe exists, but not the axiom that God exists. This is an arbitrary cultural distinction, and has nothing to do with being rational, intelligent, or educated.

When you can't explain something with reason (backed by empirical observations when appropriate), then you turn to theological explanations which rely on mythos rather than logos.

I wonder who you're referring to. Certainly not most of the Christians I know (although being from the Northeast I don't personally know too many raving fundamentalists). Did you know, by the way, that (contrary to the delightfully articulate but sometimes ill-informed Thomas Paine) Christianity is directly responsible for the scientific method? Prior to the writings of Aquinas, scientific thought was governed primarily by Platonic and Aristotelian worldviews, which specifically deny the reliability of physical experimentation.

I thought it quite interesting that the researcher quoted in TFA feels the significance of his research is to show that "we can use science to understand the world around us." Christians originated modern science, and it's silly to see both sides of this idiotic non-debate forgetting that fact.

But with the advent of science and philosophy, religion has become an antiquated relic of the past.

Since we have already established that religion is perfectly agreeable with science, we will address your other assertion: what philosophies, exactly, have effectively displaced religion? Again, as above, philosophy stems from prior assumptions -- one of which is, again, the existence of God. Perhaps you were not aware that there are theistic and nontheistic philosophies? In recent years, Alvin Plantinga has done much work in establishing theism in the forefront of philosophical scholarship. To pin your hopes on philosophy is merely to work off of beliefs you have already assumed.

--
Dum de dum.

As an US ex-fundamentalist, I will attest that they do believe that evolution denies their faith, and I think they're right. Evolution doesn't contradict theism, or Christianity in general, but fundamentalist beliefs cannot accommodate it. There are two reasons for this.

One, they demand that the entire Bible be read literally, except for parts that are specifically labeled as poetry or metaphor. So, Genesis 1 describes six literal days, and they more or less ignore the fact that it contradicts Genesis 2.

Two, they believe (by taking Genesis and Romans 5:12 literally) that death is a specific punishment for Adam & Eve's sin, and did not exist before the Fall of Man (the literal event). Obviously, evolution implies that death occurred for billions of years before humans existed.

It's a pity that they don't take other parts of the Bible literally. For example, "prove all things, hold fast what is true" or "provide things honest in the sight of all men".

"Then it's an entirely useless term, as we cannot yet claim to have exhaustive comprehension of much."

Limited scope does not mean useless: it just means limited. Behe does not argue that we "exhaustive comprehension of much"; rather he argues that now, for the first time in the history of the biochemistry, we have exhaustive comprehension of SEVERAL very significant systems.

As noted earlier, those politicizing the debate on both sides want to use what arguments they have to go further than those arguments will take them

As I understand it, all that's being claimed (at least by the original ID'rs) is that there are some systems in biochemistry that (a) are essential, and (b) inexplical -- even theoretically -- by any currently suggested process of random emergence. The problem for non-ID'rs is that these systems apparently ARE essential. And, so far, they do appear to be inexplicable by any described process of random emergence.

So, although this is not necessarily a fatal flaw in the theory of evolution, it is a check point, and does appear to require an answer.

Another way to look at it is like this: evolutionists say, we have an explanation that's complete, at least in theory, if not yet in evidence. Behe has come along and offered several counter examples , claiming that the theory of evolution cannot, in any form presently articulated, account, even in theory, for these (now) known facts.

So, while Behe's original analysis goes much less far than most Creationists would like, it remains -- until answered -- a serious roadblock for evolutionists. The fact that his fundamental and central argument is seemingly going unanswered, and indeed, unmentioned, would imply that it may be a very strong argument indeed.

The other bit, implying that I suggested that a Supreme Being, if any might be "termed a non-complex thing", is merely a distractor. I neither said, nor implied, any such thing. I'm trying very, very hard to avoid any discussion of theism versus agnosticism or atheism, since it would be OT here. In argument, focus is a valuable thing, if you are actually trying to think carefully about a problem, and arrive at even a provisional answer. OTOH, if you are only firing away to increase the noise and the smoke, well then, you are doing precisely what I have supposed the popular media to be doing on this topic.

As noted before (and again, and again), the phrase "irreducible complexity" is a carefully defined 'special term' in Behe's argument. To get into a discussion of complexity in general is simply irrelevant to Behe's argument.

PoolDoc

Atheism means lack of theism. How is that a faith? Is not believing in the tooth fairy a faith? Not believing in pink elephants?

The whole point of Atheism is that you don't need a belief system. You just go about your day to day existence without the necessity to worship any great anti-theistic power. It is an irrelevance.

The difficulty some religious people seem to have is that most of the time we simply don't think about it because it isn't important.

Sometimes when we see acts of mindless violence in the name of religion we will feel a sense of futility, but not at the acts of some great power but rather at the sense in which religious belief is so malleable by those willing to take advantage of it. The problems with religion are largely human problems. It has become just another weapon to be exploited by those who want to guide a mass of people in a way that suits them.

I can't speak for the grandparent poster, but having participated in several discussions around this in various fora I've noticed a definite cultural bias to the atheist/agnostic split. USAmericans who don't believe in a deity generally describe themselves as agnostic, while Brits with the exact same views would generally describe themselves as atheist - "agnostic" here implies uncertainty with no strong leaning either way. As you can imagine, this causes no end of confusion.

Quite why this should be so I'm not sure, but I'd be surprised if social pressure wasn't involved somehow. (Large segments of US society seem to view atheism as some sort of character defect, and strongly religious people are often viewed as slightly peculiar here in the UK.) There's one pernicious meme which comes up over and over, which is the notion that to be an atheist one must be able to prove the non-existence of any and all deities. (Must one be able to prove the existence of God to be a theist?) Some people seem to have real trouble with the whole "beyond a reasonable doubt" concept.

Donning my own (larval and very rusty) scientist hat for a moment, I'd say that theism is prima facie highly implausible and has no discernable explanatory or predictive power, therefore I don't believe it. I can't prove that all conceivable formulations of it are false, granted. I can't prove that frozen yoghurt isn't sentient, but I don't believe it, and I don't consider that disbelief an article of faith.

HTH

Within our universe, the Law of Conservation of Mass, the Law of Conservation of Energy and Einstein's Law E=mc^2 are proven *Laws*. Yet there is an enormous amount of matter and energy. Explain where it came from.

First, and almost offhand, they aren't laws, they're the currently reigning theories, which means they are our current best candidate of human metaphor for observed behavior. They may yet, or may not, be superceded, extended, and/or reduced. We'll see. Not that they are particularly relevant to your point, but your understanding of them is flawed.

Second, why would I have to explain where anything came from? I wasn't there if and when anything "came from" anywhere, nor was I around to observe that anything was always there, nor was I around to observe a continuing cycle of collapse and expansion, nor was I around to see dimensions interact... basically, I'm smart enough to know that it is outright folly to assume I know what happened umpty-ump billion years ago. I don't expect to ever know, and although I am certainly curious, my curiosity does not drive me to make ridiculous pronouncements that "this" or "that" is "how everything began" — I am comfortable not knowing. When other people make such pronouncements (for instance, when they assume "creation" by God, gods, or via "the monobloc") I just laugh at them, because they're being very silly, and furthermore, they're not even answering the question, they're just extending it to a new domain. Where did God come from? Where did the monobloc come from? Etc., ad infinitum.

You can't. No human being can fathom how it came to be. No human being can fathom the nature of such a Being Who could create such a fast and perfect system.

If a being existed outside what you're calling "creation", then there was something already, and you've not addressed how he (or it) came to be. Postulating one unanswerable, impossible to confirm situation in order to conjure up another is not only fruitless (in the gain-of-knowledge sense), it is outright stupid.

However, your claim that no human can know is without foundation in fact. You don't know where humanity will go in the future. Our scientific progress may include being able to observe long-past events. It's technically possible — in fact, you do it every time you look at the stars. I don't know if we'll figure it out, but I do know that guessing at it won't resolve the question, no matter how entertaining it is for scientists and no matter how comforting it is for theists. Why? Because given the current state of science, even if you got the right answer, you wouldn't know you had. To confirm such speculation will require observation.

Your logic has reached a cold dead-end. If you are at-all logical and truthful you must admit that something beyond your comprehension created this universe as a self-contained and self-consistent and unchangeable in its total amount of content system.

No, I don't have to admit that at all. I am fully ready to admit that the universe is here, but that's no reason to assume it was created, or unchangable. In fact, our observations of the universe may be the very best evidence that it has always been here in one form or another. We have no information that would make any rational person assume power could accrue to one being such that said being could create what we dimly perceive in the Hubble telescope's deep-field samples. This is one of the best evidentiary points in favor of discarding theism — the presumption of such power in the hands of one being makes no sense. And of course, I don't count the bible as "information" — it is a book written by a crew of scientifically illiterate early middle easterners, and as such, one of the very last places I would turn for answers to real scientific issues.

Nothing here is ever created. Nothing

Knowledge is not belief. No amoung of wordplay by gnostics or anyone else can make it so. Either you believe in a god or gods, or you don't. If that position is leveraged by knowledge, so be it, but it's still either belief, or lack of it, hence theism or atheism.

It is my *opinion* that most declared agnostics don't believe, but do not have the stones to come out and say so. But that's just my opinion. They may mostly be believers, hiding from atheists, though I think that's a little unlikely.

They have to be one or the other, though.

That's funny, but entirely false.

Define athiesm, almost all definitions I've seen invoke the word belief or disbelief. Disbelief signifies belief too, even though some athiests tries to say it doesn't.

If I were a theist, for example, and wanted to claim that my belief isn't belief, I could define theism as disbelief that there is no God. That's the same word games atheists use to deceive themselves and others.

Belief is essential to the definition of atheism. It is quite clearly the belief that there is no God.

the complete lack of religion is better known as atheism

As a former religion major, I've got to jump in here. I have yet to see a good definition of an agnostic on Slashdot, so I'll clarify.

Agnostics believe that it is logically impossible to understand God (or the Divine, or Reality, or whatever you want to call it). The argument goes like this:

GIVEN:

1. God is inifite.

Stop right there. As soon you assert that anything has infinite being, that is the last thing you can say about it. Anything else you say about it becomes a limiting factor on the infinite. ("God is male", "God has will", "God wants"...all have counters based on our first assertion.) This is actually the first thing they teach you in Philosophy of Religion, which is why I ultimately decided the entire field was mental masturabtion. (Really. They assert God is infinite, and then refuse to discuss it. The pointlessness of it is staggering.)

How about these variations. Strong Agnosticism The view that the existence (or not) of a supernatural God (or gods) is not something that can be classified as knowledge. By this definition, a person can simultaneously be a strong agnostic and a theist (or atheist) if he believes that no kind of evidence justifies belief in the existence or nonexistence of God, but chooses believe that God exists (or not) anyhow as a matter of faith or principle. Weak Agnosticism The weak agnostic does not take a position on whether the existence of God is a possible subject of knowledge, but merely asserts that he is not aware of any evidence that justifies belief one way or the other. A weak agnostic could also be a theist or atheist, but will typically hold the position only tentatively on the basis that a proof one way or the other may show up eventually. Non-Agnostic ("Gnostic" not used because it is associated with an early quasi-Christian sect.) Someone who is not agnostic takes the position that there exists an acceptable proof either for or against the existence of God or gods. We might further categorise this as "weak" (the belief that such proof is possible in principle) or "strong" (the assertion that a specific argument constitutes valid proof). Strong Atheism A strict denial of all god-like entities. A bold assertion that no such thing exists. Weak Atheism Scepticism with regard to the proposition that there exists a God or god-like entities in general. Weak atheists feel that the non-existence of godlike beings is more likely to be true than the alternative, but aren't certain about it. Weak Theism Scepticism with regard to the proposition that no godlike beings exist. Symmetric opposite of weak atheism. Weak theists suspect that there is some kind of supernatural God, but lack assurance as to detail. Strong Theism A bold assertion that a specific God or gods exist. Also covers "deism", which is the position that God exists, but is disinterested and/or impersonal. If there is a genuinely neutral position between the weak forms of theism and atheism, I'm neither familiar with its name, nor sure how such a person would behave (although "erratically" springs to mind).

Anyway, the fact you are splitting hairs about this suggests to me a hidden agenda. I suppose you are a Christian?

If insisting on correct terminology made one likely to be Christian, the world would be a very different place.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about the two positions that have been argued and re-argued many times in this discussion. The technical definition of atheism (lack of belief in any god) is different from the colloquial definition (belief in lack of any god). Many people use agnostic to mean "lack of knowledge + lack of belief" despite the fact that the unprovability of theism does not make it self-contradictory. (Lots of people believe things they can't prove, and lots of true things can't be proven.)

Well...

Atheism is a distinct belief that there is NOT a god or gods. As such, it can't really be based on scientific fact... We simply cannot prove the absense of a god/gods. As any good theist will tell you, they work in mysterious ways. Any experiment we devise could very easily be turned on its head by any god/gods that chose to. Therefor, ultimately, we have no scientific fact to back up an atheistic belief - which leaves you with belief.

Agnosticism is a statement of "I don't know". This can be a belief... Such as "Any god worth her salt would go out of her way to prevent us from knowing for sure...so it's impossible to know whether there is a god or not." Or a complete lack of belief... "I've got more important things to worry about, haven't given it much though really."

Your idea that atheism == lack of belief at all just isn't correct. Athiesm is a belief that theism is wrong. Your "lack of belief" would more correctly be expressed as agnostic.

http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheism/p/atheism .htm
http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a/ dict_standard.htm
http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a/ dict_online.htm

The secondary agnostic definition is colloquial. In that that is the intended meaning by people who don't know what they are talking about. Atheism is simply 'a-' (without) 'theism' (belief in God). It doesn't require an active disbelief, although if somebody disbelieves in God they by default lack a belief in God as well. Not believing in God is the only thing required to be an atheist.

Dictionaries simply give the senses that words are used in, not the proper sense. If a word is misused enough it gets added as that meaning, simply because somebody might wonder what a person means with that word and look it up. If you want to see this in action look up the word 'irregardless' sometime. It's not in the dictionary because it's right, it's in the dictionary because it's common. Atheism doesn't include any beliefs, just a lack of belief in any type of god or gods. However, enough people use it to mean a denial or disbelief in God (a position which does require that a person be an atheist but doesn't include most or all atheists) enough that that usage was added. Huxley coined the word 'agnostic' to mean one who doesn't know or doesn't think knowledge is possible. Agnosticism has nothing to do with belief, it's a knowledge claim. However, it has since been often improperly used as a synonym for weak atheism (lack of belief, without active disbelief concerning gods). And if a word is used improperly, and often enough it gets added. You can even check words like 'nuclear' and find, lo and behold, that annoying mispronunciation is sitting right there as proper (rhymes with spectacular). Yes, language reference are handy, but they only reference how language is used, not if it is used properly.

Atheism is NOT a belief there is/are no god(s). Atheism is a LACK of belief in any gods. A lack of belief is not a belief.

2 entries found for Atheism.
atheism (P) Pronunciation Key (th-zm)

  n.

1. 1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
   2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
2. Godlessness; immorality.

[French athéisme, from athée, atheist, from Greek atheos, godless : a-, without; see a-1 + theos, god; see dhs- in Indo-European Roots.]

[http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/eref/buy_HM AFF00004.jsp">Download Now or Buy the Book]

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Atheism

n 1: the doctrine or belief that there is no God [syn: godlessness] [ant: theism] 2: a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

If it takes you to a place where you hold the belief that "there is no god" - that is different from a lack of belief. I think of the former as "atheist", and the latter as "agnostic", but I realise many treat this as two categories of atheism: strong and weak atheism. Let's not get bogged down in that minor bit of terminology.

There remains quite a spectrum, though. You say "shred of belief, then you're a theist". There is a lot of ambiguity about what constitues a shred of belief. Is faith belief? As in: if I choose to allow god to do something good for me, instead of trying to do it myself, even though I don't actually believe god exists to do that good thing, simply because I decide it's better to make that choice... that's a kind of faith, without the belief, at least as we would describe intellectual, conscious belief. Is that a "shred of belief"? I think we can split hairs further; the point is that there is a spectrum of belief, what it means to believe, what it means to have faith or put faith in, and nuances of all that, so that it's not _obviously_ a boolean, true-or-false thing to "believe even slightly".

This has some personal meaning for me: I think I am on that edge, somewhere between "do not have a belief in god" and "put my faith in god anyway". It seems to have practical, life-enhancing benefits to think that way (borne out by scientific studies!), and it's quite hard to determine if it is contradictory, self-delusional, or even if picking a side to eliminate the paradox would in any way be less of a delusion. I actually feel a lot healthier, better, and all round good and self-consistent, compared with how I imagine I'd feel if I tried to think like an "I believe in god" or "I have zero faith in god" person.

And that's just looking at nuances in the meaning of "belief". We haven't touched on the huge variation of what people mean by "god", which means that one person says "I believe in god", and another says "I don't believe in god", and even another says "I believe there is no god", they could all actually have the same beliefs about the world, due to their different concept of what they mean by "god". And when you really ask people, they do have quite a bit of variation in what they mean, especially if you ask them in a deep way, which goes beyond the surface rote-repeating of doctrines, to people's core, driving beliefs that really animate them.

I'm saying it is not a boolean "does not believe in god" versus "has any belief in god". You cannot assign a true or false value to that question for every person, in a way that is correct for every person. The law of the Excluded Middle does not apply. Yet that, my last statement, is itself an unjustifiable statement! You can postulate that there exists _some_ definition of "believe" and "god" for which that boolean distinction is always true or false for any given person. As you have. And I can postulate that there does not. But I think despite that, neither of us can produce a satisfactory justification that proves the other wrong!

So I've merely tried to do a far more useful thing: explaining how I see those things in terms of variation and nuance... for you to see why I say there is something between theism and atheism, even if you choose to disagree, you _might_ find you don't disagree with the substance of my idea, but only with the way I summarise it as that short statement which superficially differs from yours.

Hair-splitting Peace :) ,
-- Jamie

Agnostics say that the existance or non-existence of super beings cannot be proven. Intervention of super beings in our life cannot be proven either. There is no factual evidence of any super being activity on earth.

Therefore, praying about a problem is exactly the same as ignoring the problem and talking about Gods (Theism) is just learned idling, as Nietche put it.

See this: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/guide13.html

Theism and Gnosticism are not the same thing.

Atheism and Agnosticism therefore cannot be the same thing either.

Even Atheism has no proof and therefore must be based on "belief".

That is incorrect. Atheism is the state of being without a belief in a god or gods.

It is the polar opposite of theism — belief in a god or gods.

Zealots hate agnosticism even more.

Agnosticism does not create a stance apart from atheism or theism. If you hold a belief in a god or gods, you're a theist. If you don't, you're an atheist. Agnosticism (usually) describes why the proponent doesn't hold a belief, so it's usually simply a description of the atheist stance.

There's a technical reason lying in wait as well; the theism/atheism boundry is defined by belief, or lack thereof. The stance of the self-professed agnostic is one predicated on knowledge, which actually has no bearing on the state of belief. This is why we have believers in UFOs, Phrenology, Homeopathhy, Astrology and so forth — because knowledge is not a required precursor for belief.

Belief is about faith in some degree of the unknown. Knowledge is about collecting, correlating, and developing relationships amongst instances of objective fact. Ther is no requirement whatsoever that they ever cross paths.