I'm sorry my comments are going to be piecemeal and horribly out-of-order. I hope they make sense, anyway. :-) Just a comment on this though, because this bit jumped out at me. (Forgive me, I know it's a tangent.)
Atheism, as far as I am aware, means a disbelief in God, specifically. And speaking of 'proof' then I would like to know how an atheist would *prove* that there is no God. I'm not about to argue whether God exists, I merely want to point out that both positions require faith.
The irony is, it's impossible to prove anything 100% true. However, one can *disprove* something by having one piece of contradictory evidence against it. So an atheist doesn't have to prove that God doesn't exist; an atheist only has to present one piece of evidence to contradict the theory that God exists.
A godless universe is as much of a story as a created one - what you do is choose which story you feel has the most, or the most convincing, proof.
Forgive me, I'm a scientist by training, so this puzzles me. Why wouldn't the "true" story be that which best explains all the evidence available? Believing a story is true doesn't make it true if the evidence doesn't support it. You mentioned the moon landing, and history. People may disbelieve the moon landing, but all the factual evidence so far says it happened. As an historical example (in science, because this is really cool), for decades doctors believed excess stomach acid caused peptic ulcers. Bacteria had often been noted in biopsies before then, but no one believed they'd survive the acidity until 1983 when Warren and Marshall showed Helicobacter pylori caused chronic inflammation of the stomach lining. (Marshall drank a culture. That's dedication.)
Stories can be true, even if they aren’t real. To use a handy example, consider Romeo and Juliet. They are not real. Their story is fiction. And yet their story, more than any other, has become a template for what love is, getting to the very heart of the truth about love. ETA: Or, as has been pointed out, a truth about love.
In fiction, IMO what makes a story true is whether it resonates with our personal human experience. Romeo and Juliet is true in the sense that people recognize, if not identify with, the infatuation and passion of first love.
sensiblecat made a great observation about perspective in her comment about R&J. Back to Doctor Who, the Raggedy Doctor was objectively true from Amelia's perspective (and ours), but from her parents' and Aunt Sharon's, it was true only in the way imaginary friends are true. (Then they stopped believing it when she became obsessed with it, as the obsession did not resonate with their experience.)
Yeah, that is quite a tangent, isn't it. I hope to be back later and comment more. This essay really is impressive, you know, even if I find myself not agreeing with much of it. (8000 words? Wow.)
no subject
Atheism, as far as I am aware, means a disbelief in God, specifically. And speaking of 'proof' then I would like to know how an atheist would *prove* that there is no God. I'm not about to argue whether God exists, I merely want to point out that both positions require faith.
The irony is, it's impossible to prove anything 100% true. However, one can *disprove* something by having one piece of contradictory evidence against it. So an atheist doesn't have to prove that God doesn't exist; an atheist only has to present one piece of evidence to contradict the theory that God exists.
A godless universe is as much of a story as a created one - what you do is choose which story you feel has the most, or the most convincing, proof.
Forgive me, I'm a scientist by training, so this puzzles me. Why wouldn't the "true" story be that which best explains all the evidence available? Believing a story is true doesn't make it true if the evidence doesn't support it. You mentioned the moon landing, and history. People may disbelieve the moon landing, but all the factual evidence so far says it happened. As an historical example (in science, because this is really cool), for decades doctors believed excess stomach acid caused peptic ulcers. Bacteria had often been noted in biopsies before then, but no one believed they'd survive the acidity until 1983 when Warren and Marshall showed Helicobacter pylori caused chronic inflammation of the stomach lining. (Marshall drank a culture. That's dedication.)
Stories can be true, even if they aren’t real. To use a handy example, consider Romeo and Juliet. They are not real. Their story is fiction. And yet their story, more than any other, has become a template for what love is, getting to the very heart of the truth about love. ETA: Or, as has been pointed out, a truth about love.
In fiction, IMO what makes a story true is whether it resonates with our personal human experience. Romeo and Juliet is true in the sense that people recognize, if not identify with, the infatuation and passion of first love.
Yeah, that is quite a tangent, isn't it. I hope to be back later and comment more. This essay really is impressive, you know, even if I find myself not agreeing with much of it. (8000 words? Wow.)