Re: Golden Compass Backlash...
The strongest position is agnostic. "I don't know"--absolutely unshakeable.
Next strongest would be theism. In the sense of "I experienced something."
Last would be atheism. "There is nothing to experience." VERY difficult to prove. Pretty much impossible in the theological area.
Mathematically it is much easier to prove than disprove.
My favorite analogy is this. Three guys go into a room and come out. One guy says,
"There's a cat in that room. I saw it."
Second guy says, "I didn't see a cat."
Third guy says, "There is NO cat in that room."
Now...who is most likely wrong. What's funny is, that whenever the experience of God is brought up, atheists immediately start talking about coercion, hallucination, lying, etc.
But there on position...based on denying something because they didn't experience it, is always touted as being scientific and unassailable.
Uhm, sorry for jumping in like that, but I think your cat example in context with atheism is flawed.
The atheist´s position would be : There is
no cat in that room, because cats
don´t exist.
In your example, the existence of cats seems to be commonly accepted. They probably all have seen their share of cats outside this situation. It´s just the existence of one particular cat in one particular room that´s up to debate. And given the circumstances the third person´s position of denial of a cat in the room gets more or less likely. If he´s there for the first time his insisting seems silly - but if it´s his own room, from which he
knows it was hermetically shut until five minutes ago, then there´s still the small chance of a cat in there, that slipped in this five minutes, but the position he has will be the more likely.
Back to the point :
If all the evidence of gods existence are personal and subjective (meaning: not scientifically or empiric provable ) and made by someone else but me, why is my position of saying : "No, man, you are not going to heaven and I´m not going to hell, because God & Co don´t exist" a
weaker position than "I have never seen it, I can never prove it, but you´re going to hell if you´re not living after the rules given by god (whose existence waits to be proven, too)"?
And that´s my single problem with religion. Not that people believe in god. If it helps you, fine, more power to you. It´s the fact, that certain religious people (e.g. the churches ) demand a say in how
I live, based on something
they believe. And expect me to accept their subjective experience as prove. I think that´s most atheists main problem. They don´t go up the fence because you dare believe in god and they hate it. They go, sometimes rabid, against personal believe because they see it as the source of a lot of trouble in our daily life. I think, some of them don´t get that personal religion and organized religion are not the same, and that the former doesn´t have to be fought against like the letter.
