darth_ender said:
There is an inherent advantage for the believers when using the word 'know' in debate. The atheist holds that in order for something to be true, it must be demonstrable through observation and scientific experimentation. A falsifiable experiment is necessary to actually disprove something. From Wikipedia.
I think you are generalizing quite a lot here, and being very presumptuous. Not all atheists are materialistic atheists or ascribe strictly to scientific thought, or require demonstration or falsifiability to disbelieve in God or gods.
And even for those of us who do, you're trying to spin the scientific process in a way that makes it sound extraordinarily limiting, in a way that it isn't to most of us. Ultimately, a scientist knows that we don't know even a small fraction of everything there is to know, and that the knowledge we do have is just a starting point to greater discovery and free thought. Where you make it sound like a brick wall that stops us in our tracks, it is really a wide open gateway and a series of bridges and roads to all sorts of exciting places that are still in the process of being built and paved.
For this reason, I can see where the agnostic comes from, but not the atheist. The agnostic does not believe God exists, yet reserves ultimate judgment. The atheist on the other hand feels that they can somehow disprove God's existence, though such is scientifically impossible. In other words, they are contradicting the only source of truth they even accept: scientific experimentation.
From a strictly scientific standpoint, there is absolutely no reason to feel the need to disprove the existence of God. It is not that complicated.
I'm going to use Odin, because he is by far the most badass god who ever existed. (See what I did there?)
Now I am pretty sure none of you theists believe Odin exists. In fact, I am willing to bet you guys know Odin doesn't exist. The very idea of believing in this ancient Nord god in this day and age is silly. But at one time for a group of people who lived long ago, it would have been offensive to walk up to them and say Odin doesn't exist. It's very likely you would end up with a battle axe embedded in your skull, in the name of Odin, of course. Perhaps some of them would have just tisk tisked your lack of faith, or challenged you to disprove Odin, ranted about how their belief liberates them, or simply handed you a banana. Who knows.
The definition of "atheist" is: "A person who does not believe in the existence of God or gods."
Darth_Ender, Warb, Mrebo, and any other theist here, I could be way off on this and just wildly assuming, but I am willing to bet you are all atheist. If you only believe in one god, it means there are hundreds of gods you don't believe in, or that you hold an atheist stance toward. In the end, I simply disbelieve in one less god than the countless number of gods you don't believe in. The same way you find no reason you should believe in Ra, I find no reason I should believe in your god.
Something I have noticed, and it's just an observation and may not be correct, but I feel that more atheists tend to have a chip on their shoulders than agnostics. It seems that because 'Mom sent me to Catholic school' or 'Bible-thumpin' George W. Bush started a crusade against Islam' or 'Evangelicals won't accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle,' therefore 'because I disagree with what some religious individuals have done to ruin my life or poison the world, God cannot possibly exist.' One may use this as evidence in their personal quiver, but still cannot actually disprove God. They may only support their theory, but they cannot 'know' that God does not exist.
Religion has done and does do a lot of shitty things. While I tend to be much more open minded about religion and its positive sides, I certainly cannot fault people for speaking out against it.
Religious persons on the other hand are liberated in this sense. Their sources of knowledge are not limited to the scientific method (though they may be limiting themselves in other ways). They believe that God can prove his existence to them, and that they can 'know' he is real. The scientist may dispute this method, but the very fact that it is accepted on faith and not on scientific proof allows for a claim to knowledge, even if the non-believer disputes the reality of that knowledge.
Wow. I don't even know where to begin in disagreeing with this, it is overwhelming.