Quote:
Originally Posted by GBP04
what about the non-belief in a specific god? for example, rejecting the existence of the Hindu god (or the Pastafarian one). rejecting Pastafarianism feels closer to science than theology
What in science allows you to reject specific Gods or Hindu theology? Only three things I can see:
1. Claims made about the world in holy books are proven to be wrong by science, reducing their credibility as documents
2. God is on longer needed to have a credible model of existence.
3. Analyzing humans as the generators of claims and myths (i.e. the epistemology of human claims) leads one to conclude to a very high probability that the more specific religious claims are human generated ones.
(1) I think is too easily explained away. It's not compelling
(2) is nice but doesn't allow us to reject God claims. It merely provides an alternative hypothesis.
(3) seem compelling to me, but isn't really science - more epistemology and probability.
So I'm not sure how science allows us to reject God. They still seem like theological claims. And I contend that many atheists that reject God often do so because the God character is offensive or limiting to them, being an anachronism in the modern world with modern morality.That's a kind of theology - "God, if he existed, would be nothing like this, so I can't take your claims seriously".
Maybe you have better ideas, but I'm not seeing a path to reject God claims just using science. Making theological claims seems to be required:
- The universe looks nothing like what I'd expect if a god being being existed
- None of the God characters seem compelling to my personal morality/theology or sense of what should or could be out there
- The universe is materialistic or deterministic and impersonal by all accounts; such a system has no room for a god.
They all have elements of theology - ideas about the way a God being should be.