Atheism (Agnosticism)

by David Warden , Thursday, January 17, 2008, 20:32 (5941 days ago)

Not all atheists are dogmatic atheists. I am an atheist because I think it is a reasonable position, given the current state of the argument. I've read Swinburne, Paul Davies, John Hick, Keith Ward, Dawkins, Stenger, and so on. The arguments for the existence of God do not work for me and even Swinburne tacitly admits that 'religious experience' is not persuasive unless the experience in question can be confidently linked to an external referent, ie God. Very few philosophers and theologians argue that religious faith can be disengaged entirely from rationality - Kierkegaard and Karl Barth would be the main examples of a tiny band. So theism stands or falls on the grounds of rational argument. It also stands or falls on existential grounds. Is an omniscient, omnipotent God compatible with human dignity, privacy and freedom? Probably not, and therefore atheism is a reasonable position on purely human grounds. - Of course, we cannot know for sure whether theism or atheism is correct, but it is not unresonable to come down on one side of the argument. Agnosticism is not even the suspension of judgement. It contains the hidden assumption that the God-hypothesis is beyond the scope of human rationality, but this itself is an arbitrary and rather sterile assumption.