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Belief and proof are two very different things.

In Reply to: If your an atheist, you do not have to prove anything posted by Ryan Close on October 08, 1999 at 10:36:23:

: Atheists and agnotics do not have to prove any thing. Only those people who beleive can argue, the atheists only has to say, "there is no evedence, therefore God doesn't exsist." And athiests are entitled to that belief if they wish, but can they really be scientific when holding this belief? Or maybe we should try a new type of science, one not based on the scientific method. We need a paradigm of sorts in our scoiety. We can only go so far before there is no where to go any more. We have reached a wall. We tell our children they are nothing more than animals and then they go out and kill their classmates.
: Hobbes said that we as a human race have no capasity for rational thought. He saw us as nothing more than resus monkies on crack. Only beings concerned with what suits us at the moment, controled by emotion and animal urges. But it is REASON that alows us to decide between right an wrong. It is the scientific world that has told us there is no soul, no spirit. Acording to Plato, the Greek philosipher, there is something that is a part of a living man that makes him diffrent from a dead man. He called it the Psyche. And part of the Psyche is the part of us that decides what urges are right and what are wrong. This is reason, and from a purely scientific worldview these things do not exist, in fact we must all be animals. I hope I have shone that there are major flaws in the current scientific method.

: But useing today's science, it would be imposible for me to ask any one to prove something does not exist.

It's interesting how many people seem to be avoiding one simple fact: Belief and proof are two very different things. When you have faith in something, it means you don't need proof. Whenever someone does have faith and searches for evidence it is most likely in order to prove what they believe to others. It's just as easy to believe there is a God as it is to believe there is not. That is the one and only separation between Atheism and religion. Some don't need proof, some do. Those who need absolute proof are agnostic, they are unsure because it is impossible for concrete evidence to exist. It's easy to surmise about the existance of a soul, or that morality comes from a higher design, but in the end it must all come down to theories and suppositions because, as mortal people, it would be impossible for us to understand our true spiritual nature. We must exist in the temporal world and that world is all we are destined to understand.

Regardless, in the end, no one with any religious beliefs has anything to prove. Some may strive to prove, as many religious archeologists try to make others believe the Bible is factual, and as Athiests have had to defend themselves as heathens over the years. But proof has little bearing on a desicion based on faith, wich is the true nature of all religion.

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