FlashRubino

I'm an atheist myself, but it occurs to me that if we accept Hume's view of miracles--that a miracle's non-occurrence must be less probable than its occurrence to command belief--then there is no way to falsify atheism, and consequently it is compatible with any state of affairs, and therefore a meaningless metaphysical claim.

if g*d himself [sic] showed up on my doorstep and said, "Here I am. Deal with it," it would be far more likely that I was hallucinating or the victim of an elaborate hoax than that the actual deity dropped by for a visit.

So it seems to me that atheist claims that "there is no [empirical] evidence for the existence of g*d" are beside the point: From the atheist perspective, there is nothing that could conceivably COUNT as evidence for the existence of g*d, since alternative explanations for g*d-like phenomena are much more probable.

In other words, "There is no g*d" has the same empirical status as statements like "The world is material," or "the world is Idea."

If I misunderstand Hume or, say, Karl Popper, where did I go off the track?

Thanks for your well-considered replies.

Although I'm an atheist, I'm a little troubled by the glib invocation of logic and rationalism by my fellow non-believers.

Since the 17th century, the greatest rationalists include Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant, theists all. In fact, the biggest skeptic, almost certainly an atheist, was David Hume, also the most militant anti-rationalist. "Reason is and ought always to be, the slave of the passions."

Among logicians, Boole, Kantor, and Godel, three of the most important ever, were committed theists. Saul Kripke, I'd say the current league leader, is an observant Jew. Hegel, though some might withold the title of logician, thought he was anyway, and was certainly a theist. De Morgan, of all people, dabbled in spiritualism. And then there's Lewis Carroll, who of course was an Anglican divine.

So, I just don't see the force of a counterargument consisting exactly of self-identification as a rationalist or logician. To my mind it calls the self-identification into question, if anything.

Is there something I'm missing? Are rationalism and logic the purview of atheists only, and these guys were just imposters? Or what? I'd really like to hear some rational and logical discourse on this--not so much theists piling on.

There is an "alternative" catgory in the science and math section. I'm just wondering what alternative math would be like. Squared circles? pi= 3? Anyone have any experience with this?