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wingedbeastThe corollary to the last tip, that admitting honest ignorance doesn't make you lose, nonbelievers admitting honest ignorance doesn't make you win.
A common experience of atheists involved in these conversations is to be asked a number of questions, the answers to which are, scientifically speaking, currently unknown. What caused the Big Bang? How did life first begin? How did a particular biological feature evolve? (Yes, disproving evolution is, sometimes, thrown in there, but not always).
On a scientific matter, the answer to the first two questions is "I don't know". At least, that's the honest answer. Depending on the biological feature, there may or may not be an answer. At no point, however, does "I don't know" translate to "I must be wrong and must, therefore, default to your belief system".
And, I'm not even hypothesizing as to what the motivation might be. It's been said many times, many ways. Sometimes, it's the thinly veiled "Are you satisfied with that?". Sometimes, it's outright stated "without an alternative, the theistic answer is all that remains."
I may or may not be satisfied with not knowing. My curiosity is not infinite and the amount of effort it takes for me, personally, to find out, might be just too high. That as opposed to let other people find out while still being able to check the soundness of their scientific rigor.
The polite way to describe this would be that this shows a focus on completion, rather than accuracy. The notion that the answer that answers the most must be right, on the basis that anything else leaves unanswered questions. The accuracy focus is less concerned with having all the answers right now than it is with addressing answers and testing them for validity.
To repeat, you saying "I don't know" doesn't spell your defeat. Them saying "I don't know" doesn't spell your victory. It just means that there are things we don't know.
A common experience of atheists involved in these conversations is to be asked a number of questions, the answers to which are, scientifically speaking, currently unknown. What caused the Big Bang? How did life first begin? How did a particular biological feature evolve? (Yes, disproving evolution is, sometimes, thrown in there, but not always).
On a scientific matter, the answer to the first two questions is "I don't know". At least, that's the honest answer. Depending on the biological feature, there may or may not be an answer. At no point, however, does "I don't know" translate to "I must be wrong and must, therefore, default to your belief system".
And, I'm not even hypothesizing as to what the motivation might be. It's been said many times, many ways. Sometimes, it's the thinly veiled "Are you satisfied with that?". Sometimes, it's outright stated "without an alternative, the theistic answer is all that remains."
I may or may not be satisfied with not knowing. My curiosity is not infinite and the amount of effort it takes for me, personally, to find out, might be just too high. That as opposed to let other people find out while still being able to check the soundness of their scientific rigor.
The polite way to describe this would be that this shows a focus on completion, rather than accuracy. The notion that the answer that answers the most must be right, on the basis that anything else leaves unanswered questions. The accuracy focus is less concerned with having all the answers right now than it is with addressing answers and testing them for validity.
To repeat, you saying "I don't know" doesn't spell your defeat. Them saying "I don't know" doesn't spell your victory. It just means that there are things we don't know.
