Letters to the Editor
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@theobald.
With all due respect, I disagree. Atheists, theists, all humans require faith.
Will you grant that faith and trust are essentially the same thing?
See you, me, and everyone else trusts our mind and our senses. You trust your mind enough to make the assertion "there is no God", you trust the scientific method wholly.
There is no reason to trust either of these assumptions.
The mind, like everything else in the world is subject to evolution, under what pretense should you trust the human mind as it stands right now, to be able to state "there is no God. I know that". (unfortunately, if you counter with "all I'm saying is that there's no evidence for God" then you're not much of an atheist. It's intellectually dishonest to tear down one philosophical whole and then refuse to build one up yourself...you gotta go the whole way, and not just say "nope. no god.") There's no reason to beleive your mind, there just isn't. You just have to trust your mind, and trust = faith.
all humans have faith, whether you want to admit that or not is up to you.
Look, I'm not saying that you're wrong to believe what you do...I personally don't care, but I find it irksome when people state "faith is wrong" or "faith is stupid", when they themselves exhibit faith on a daily basis (they just have faith in different things). It's the intellectual superiority vibe that irks most people.
(although to be fair, this message board has been MILES better than earlier ones for showing restraint and common ground...maybe that's another reason why these discussions aren't totally useless :)
(of course this could easily devolve into an interminable "brain in a vat" discussions...but those just give me headaches :)
cheers