
Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method - mathgenius
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atheism-is-inconsistent-with-the-scientific-method-prizewinning-physicist-says/
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Stefan-H
"Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or
for that."

I view atheism as the null hypothesis, for which you don't need any evidence.
It is the de-facto stance for when there is no evidence to suggest another
hypothesis.

edit: "And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any
kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or
Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an
agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something
he or she doesn’t know about."

Is this person also agnostic when it comes to Russell's teapot? I'm pretty
sure that they would make the statement that there is not in fact a teapot
circling the earth, just like there is not a god in heaven. His argument about
the agnostic person not being able to make a final decision is a slide into
solipsism.

~~~
m_mueller
I see it a bit differently, it's basically an undecidable problem (at least
for now). Intelligent design == simulation hypothesis vs. pure accident and
the anthropological principle. Which one of these is the null hypothesis is a
matter of perspective / cultural background. What clearly does not hold are
idiotic things like biblical literalism. But the big bang theory opens more
questions than it answers.

~~~
gcommer
Not to repeat the the entire previous thread about this
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445855))
but this is just a semantic wordplay: on any other similar existence questions
(is there a teapot orbiting the sun?) we'd gladly conflate "undecidable" with
"false" as the difference between those cases is a negligible probability. But
when you mix in such a culturally sensitive topic like religion, suddenly we
have to carefully distinguish these two cases. It's an unfair inconsistency
that is used to propagate religious thinking.

~~~
m_mueller
How do you assign probability to those two hypothesis? I'm genuinely curious.

~~~
gcommer
This gets philosophical, but roughly I think of it as:

Something that is truly false has a 0% chance of being true, by definition.

Something that has we have proven false has an effectively 0% probability of
being true -- but more specifically, it is whatever probability you assign to
Descartes' evil demon being true (ie the probability of _everything_ else you
know, even rules of logic and math, being false). Every non-solipsist assumes
that this probability is negligibly different from 0, therefore in practice we
consider "proven false" to be the same as "truly false".

If something is "undecidable", I take that to mean that we don't yet have (and
may never be able to acquire) any supporting evidence to meaningfully separate
it from the "proven false" case. This is just the standard behavior of
assuming the null hypothesis... or colloquially: not believing something for
no reason.

(there's probably some much more standard set of terminology for these ideas)

~~~
m_mueller
Exactly. Not believing something for no reason. I see postulating that there
is no hierarchically higher intelligence just as much as a believe system as
postulating that there is. So far I couldn't find evidence pro or contrary
either of these. Penrose, as I've written elsewhere, is IMO the closest to
producing such evidence and I'll gladly revise my stance if/when that happens.

~~~
baumandm
In my experience, most people don't actually claim there is no higher
intelligence or god. They just don't accept the claim that there is (because
there is no evidence). The nuance of this tends to get lost through imperfect
language.

That's the point of the teapot. Technically there is equal probability of it
existing or not, but that is meaningless.

Anything without evidence is equally likely to exist or not, but for some
reason people only tend to take this seriously in regards to religion.

~~~
m_mueller
Imagine for a moment that our telescopes show mostly black except a ring of
light from one direction. The light scattering has furthermore been used to
indicate that the universe is mostly water, with some complex carbon based
molecules in diluted form. Newer religions are thus calling our universe the
holy teapot, waiting for the great beings above to open it up. Of course
that's nonsense say the atheists who have a perfect theory for how the ring of
light and water universe has come to existence, it only relies on the
assumption that from nothing there was suddenly something.

This is essentially the teapot equivalent of the big bang theory. Atheists
also dispell the idea of the teapot with a hypothetical teaspoon orbiting
Saturn - as we can't see it it's ridiculous to just postulate it's there, with
handle and cover and stove - we have no way of proving its existence from what
we observe only.

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pushcx
Yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445855)

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rendall
Speaking as an atheistically-inclined agnostic, I think the New Atheists can
be rather "motte & bailey"* with their arguments.

The atheist bailey is the assertion "there is no higher being, no after life,
and no spirituality", which is a scientifically indefensible stance, as the
article states. It could be true, but this assertion is a religious statement
of faith. Atheist discourse is largely centered here.

The motte is the statement "Belief in a higher power or the after life is not
supported by empirical evidence", which _is_ scientifically defensible.

When critics of atheism point out that any assertion about something which
cannot be invalidated is non-empirical, even _religious_ (e.g. "There is no
after life" or "God does not exist in any form"), (some) atheists respond "'No
God' is simply the null hypothesis! We just don't see evidence for it!" When
the challenge is gone, atheists go on to write essays about how religious
ideas are wrong and "There is no God" is clearly correct, and anyone who holds
any doubt about this whatsoever is irrational at best.

*I tried and failed to find a link to a discussion of the metaphor and fallacy of "motte & bailey" that was both concise, correct and politically neutral; suffice to say that it is a kind of strategic ambiguity. If it's new to you, I'll just quote the relevant passage from the Slate Star Codex blog:

"[In a] medieval castle…there would be a field of desirable and economically
productive land called a bailey, and a big ugly tower in the middle called the
motte. If you were a medieval lord, you would do most of your economic
activity in the bailey and get rich. If an enemy approached, you would retreat
to the motte and rain down arrows on the enemy until they gave up and went
away. Then you would go back to the bailey, which is the place you wanted to
be all along.

"So the motte-and-bailey doctrine is when you make a bold, controversial
statement. Then when somebody challenges you, you claim you were just making
an obvious, uncontroversial statement, so you are clearly right and they are
silly for challenging you. Then when the argument is over you go back to
making the bold, controversial statement."

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ramy_d
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins)

    
    
      Dawkins is known as an outspoken atheist. In interviews, he has called himself an agnostic about many matters of religious faith, instead endorsing reason.[citation needed] He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design.
    

Why wasn't he awarded a Templeton prize?

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binjo
Booked this guy for Jesus because he's on the path to finding truth!

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aurizon
LOL, as if anything at all from the mouths if the ilk of Templeton has any
merit at all. We all know that religion is a false and coercive method of
social control of people to get their money and wage your wars. Prove me
wrong!

~~~
__d
He appears to be talking (in this article at least) more about spirituality
than religion.

I think it's hard to dispute his basic point: you cannot prove a negative (or
as he phrased it, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence").

I do find it kinda odd to hear those who profess to a spiritual belief ragging
on those who profess a belief in the contrary though. Neither of them has
evidence.

~~~
aurizon
spirituality flip religion. Both schemes to coerce people

