Atheism null hypothesis

One of the cornerstones of science is the scientific method, which is the process by which phenomena are understood and measured based on observable data. At one time, atomic particles were not observable, given the instruments at our disposal. Neither was dark matter. Or gravity, for that matter, which still cannot be directly observed: only measured as it affects other objects. I respect the process and constraints of the scientific method. Making room for those possibilities, seem, to me, to be at the heart of science as much as the rigorous processes defined by the scientific method.

Even Aristotle conceded that the boundaries of science prohibited it from testing certain metaphysical phenomena such as the existence of God. It seems to me, to paraphrase Paul like Huxley , that we risk becoming that which we hate in staking claims of certainty on either side of this issue.

In pushing back primarily against religious fundamentalism, atheism risks embracing the very fundamentalism it resists. And in doing so, it abandons the very principles of science it claims as the basis for non-belief.

I can work with a null hypothesis on the existence of God. You see its a catch 22, a rock and a hard place. If they cant prove then they cant persuade through logic, but if they can prove then in a major way they undermine faith and the entire religion collapses anyway.

Intellectually speaking, its an unfair burden to place on faith-based religions - an intellectually dishonest and ideologically cowardice game to play. If atheism is so hung up on logic and empiricism, then utilize such tools before making an assertion. Atheism isnt atheism at all If youre simply "devoid of faith" then youre atheist what you call soft atheism , as long as youre open minded to either side.

But very few self-described "atheists" are open minded. If however you are positively asserting the absurdity of religion and denying gods existence then youre an anti-theist what you call hard atheism. Im describing the meanings of the prefixes a- and anti- here, the true meanings of the words and not how theyve been falsely interpreted by todays world.

Anti-theism is a religion in itself. It makes an assertion about transcendent matters If after all the "atheist", i. The anti-theist believes what they believe in faith, and nothing more.

But what they believe is of a spiritual, transcendent matter. Put the two together and you have the definition of religion.

I have no doubt that I will get down voted for this response. Even though I explicitly answered each and every one of your questions. Thats what "open minded people" do, after all.

Take me for example. Im a true atheist, not an anti-theist. I am open minded and willing to be persuaded by either side. Through facts or through divine inspiration the only way I recognize theism to be persuasive.

Such evidence hasnt crossed my path yet. I simply "dont know". Wait, I hear you saying "Isnt that agnosticism? But agnostic simply means you dont believe evidence exists, it doesnt mean youre undecided. There are agnostic theists and gnostic theists. Within the Christian framework there should only be agnostic theists. And I would hope all anti-theists, the ones who pretend logic and science are on their side, would be gnostic.

I will take your lead on this and use "soft" and "hard". I would argue that soft anti-theism is a religion unto itself, for reasons already explained, what Ive previously described as anti-theism.

I would thus call hard anti-theism a form of faith bigotry. Its usually a visceral over-reactionary response to other peoples beliefs, rooted in resentment over principles and of other peoples successes. Then there is the concept of "burden to prove" itself. This does not stem from logic or science. I would make the claim that there is no basis in empiricism for it.

Although it potentially can be adopted into it. The notion of a burden to prove is actually a moralistic philosophy stemming from Abrahamic religions, and has more to do with criminal court than it does scientific or philosophical inquiry. The idea is, of course, that it is a greater sin moral wrong to punish the innocent than it is to fail to punish the guilty.

We get "proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt" from the same source and for the same reasons. The burden to prove is always on the accuser, not on the accused. This is why in my first paragraph it was relevant to point out that atheism is challenging the status quo, not the one being challenged.

Historically this is so, and so the burden should have always been on atheism. On the surface, the idea that the burden to prove rests with the side proposing a claim is not unreasonable even in a scientific framework.

But then again it kind of is unreasonable if you think about it in terms of intellectual honesty. If science is about the pursuit of truths then shouldnt all sides of any claim be pursued? If one side of the debate is constitutionally incapable of providing proof, then as previously argued why should they be compelled to?

Why should the alternative who is not hindered in the same way deny the responsibility? A lack of evidence is not evidence of lacking, as Im sure youre aware. So any atheists who takes the theists inability or refusal to try cannot claim scientific victory. The atheist must still prove his own claim if he is to believe it is truth. I assert now that there is no burden to prove in science, and no shifting of that burden either.

The burden rests squarely and equally on both sides of any claim. Prove a proposition or else prove its opposite. Or admit there is no evidence either way; or else admit that you simply lack the will or desire to pursue truths in that subject, and graciously bow out of the conversation.

A scientist - any rational person - would not deny the duty to pursue the truth of any claim if at all possible. And no rational person would expect rationality from faith; if it isnt logically inconsistent with the faith then it cannot be utilized to disprove it. Could you expand on science not being bound by strict repeatability?

I get it for Geology - but not other sciences. Re the fishbowl - what if it were an enclosed self-sustaining ecosystem where there is no obligation for interaction daily feeding simply the opportunity?

There are interactions, but not ones you can make predictions about. Science splits chunks of phenomena into ever deeper seated pieces lurking behind appearances, exact combinations of which may never repeat. If God were one of such pieces he would be within its range. My point is that metaphysics that makes God both unknowable and relevant is extremely tricky. I do not see how changing obligation to opportunity affects anything, either the opportunity is explored or it is not, in which case we still have idle speculation.

And science can look for explanations without predictions, e. Fair enough - my point is that scientific truth excludes historic claims. Can something be historically true but excluded from science? The past matters to the extent that it still affects us, and I see no essential difference there between geology, paleontology and history as a social science. God matters to that same extent. Scientists would readily concede existence of unkonowable truths about the past, or that transcendent God is not ruled out by science, but neither are ancient aliens, parallel worlds, astral cords or the fount of youth.

Few believers are content to keep him in that company. So theologians came to postulate access channels that science can not tap, like intellectual intuition or mystic revelation. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. One can raise the following objections: In statistics the null-hypothesis is generally assumed to be true. Improve this answer. Jo Wehler Jo Wehler Cort Ammon Cort Ammon A well crafted response. So a proof of non-existence proved nothing. Dan Willard explored mathematical proof systems where multiplication was not total.

One of the funny things that came of it was that you could create a set which is probably countably infinite outside of his system using standard set theory , but which, when constructed inside one of his self-verifying systems, was provably uncountably infinite. Perhaps a parlor trick at best, but your comment reminded me of it! I think the Bayesian approach is more useful in this scenario because: Speaking in terms of a prior makes more explicit that it is one person's bias in the argument which is actually what's happening It is as expressive as speaking in terms of a null hypothesis the selection of a "null hypothesis" corresponds to one's priors.

There are in reality degrees of not knowing that null hypothesis testing doesn't account for well. James Kingsbery James Kingsbery 5, 1 1 gold badge 16 16 silver badges 41 41 bronze badges. In particular it is an important bit of self-awareness to realize that even starting with a framework of "using a null hypothesis" i.

Babies, for instance, do not use such a framework in their "inquiries". James Kingsbery Also the Bayesian approach operates in the domain of stochastics. But concerning the theism-atheism issue we do not have a manifold of cases which allows to argue by using probabilities. For some, God is an anthropomorphic "other.

Caputo suggests, it's not that God exists as some independent metaphysical entity, but rather God "insists, so that the rest of creation might exist. Put another way, God is the impetus, the spark, the divine breath, the "inspiration," if you will from which all the rest of creation finds meaning. But God is not to be found "elsewhere. Yet to borrow a scientific concept, when you're seeing an object, what you're actually seeing is the light, or more specifically, the result of the interaction between the light and the observed object.

But you don't see the thing itself; you see the light. But the light is the means by which we find meaning in all that we see. Pretty amazing understanding of God if you ask me. But how do you measure it? How do you prove it? Or disprove it? One of the cornerstones of science is the scientific method, which is the process by which phenomena are understood and measured based on observable data.

And I can see why someone who leans heavily on the scientific method would say that, since the idea of God is not directly observable in the ways defined by the scientific method, it's a non-issue.

But here's the thing. At one time, atomic particles were not observable, given the instruments at our disposal. Neither was dark matter. Or gravity, for that matter, which still cannot be directly observed: only measured as it affects other objects.