"After all, even if we simply define 'atheism' as the denial that God exists, this claim itself has corollaries and entailments of the largest scope. Atheism pictures the universe as a natural system, that is, a system not guided by intelligence, and not traversed by spirits: a universe, among other things, that yields to scientific explanation, because it consists of material objects operating according to physical laws. Atheism is taken up, in short, as part of a whole stance toward the universe, a theory of everything.
Belief and unbelief do not simply consist of a particular claim and its negation, but of different whole pictures of the world, from its most general organization to the particular character of each event. Such world-pictures cannot themselves be shown to be true or false by science, or indeed by any rational technique. They are all matters of faith, stances taken up by finite creatures with regard to the infinitely rich surround. One does not produce reasons for such things; one lives them.
I propose an unreasonable and modest atheism, an atheism that relies not on supposed proofs and the lack thereof, but on a sense of the way the world is: an atheist faith."
2 comments:
lulz.
"After all, even if we simply define 'atheism' as the denial that God exists, this claim itself has corollaries and entailments of the largest scope. Atheism pictures the universe as a natural system, that is, a system not guided by intelligence, and not traversed by spirits: a universe, among other things, that yields to scientific explanation, because it consists of material objects operating according to physical laws. Atheism is taken up, in short, as part of a whole stance toward the universe, a theory of everything.
Belief and unbelief do not simply consist of a particular claim and its negation, but of different whole pictures of the world, from its most general organization to the particular character of each event. Such world-pictures cannot themselves be shown to be true or false by science, or indeed by any rational technique. They are all matters of faith, stances taken up by finite creatures with regard to the infinitely rich surround. One does not produce reasons for such things; one lives them.
I propose an unreasonable and modest atheism, an atheism that relies not on supposed proofs and the lack thereof, but on a sense of the way the world is: an atheist faith."
http://www.crispinsartwell.com/atheism2.htm
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