backwoods
No idea is fully corroborated, and any contrary evidence invalidates it. And yet average Joes who have read a couple of popular science books are pretty darn confident in their beliefs.
Consider me not your "average Joe", if you'd be so good.
I studied Genetics and Evolutionary Biology at University, and I've kept myself pretty much up to date with developments in both ever since.
And you are correct in your assumption that "No idea is fully corroborated", unless of course you delve into mathematics and some strains of pure logic. Science doesn't work like that at all. All we can hope for is to have a set of ideas that best fit the current evidence, nothing more. Newton's Laws of motion held up for nearly 200 years until Einstein amended them. And at the moment, the evidence available favours Einstein's ideas rather than Newton's. No doubt someone will come along in the future and point out the errors in his calculations.
This is how we progress. This is why I can type this message and you can read it a fraction of a second later, rather than having to wait for more traditional methods of conveying my words to you.
To spin your argument around, compare the
modus operandi of the scientific method with the views of most believers, who somehow
know with absolute certainty that their god exists, that he is the only god that exists, and that by paying him due deference and worshipping him correctly, they will continue to live on past the death of their physical body.
And all without even one miniscule speck of evidence from the past 2500 years to even hint that this is true.
I never understand why rational and intelligent human beings, who would normally seek out and act upon research and evidence before committing to some particular action, suspend all such rationality when the matter of religion is the subject in question.
You wouldn't buy a new car without looking under the hood, or checking the logbook would you? Or you wouldn't put medicine into your body that hadn't been put through countless lengthy and sophisticated clinical trials, would you?
Ironically, most Christians I know ascribe the same rational scrutiny to
other religions as others (and atheists) apply to theirs. The only difference between an atheist and a believer is that the believer believes
in just one more religion.
My own feelings on religion of all kinds is that they are now well past their use-by date. The spaces left in our knowledge for the 'god-of-the-gaps' to fill have become almost vanishingly small. The antiquated and often ludicrous laws that are stipulated in the holy scriptures are mostly anachronisms in the 21st century, and we are better off without many of them.
If we can safely dispense with the need for religious law and religious explanations for perfectly natural events, that only really leaves one thing to cling on to - the promise of eternal life. They say man is the only animal that knows he is going to die. And I reckon that man has always been frightened by that very prospect. If you can convince yourself that you're going somewhere else when you pop your clogs, I guess it makes the thought of death a little less daunting. My view is that many religions were begun on this very premise, and have subsequently been used to impose order on the ignorant unwashed ever since.
Back to the business of belief, I often hear the argument that, as an atheist, I do actually believe in something - in other words that I
believe there is no god.
But to me that's not only ridiculous, it doesn't really make any sense. The word atheism itself means 'lack of belief (in god/gods/deities)', if anything. As mentioned previously, I might be incredibly naïve, but I don't fully understand how this can be confusing to people.
In a way, it's similar to demanding that an atheist proves there is no god, as if in some ways to justify his (non) beliefs. To me that's ridiculous; you can ask anyone to disprove anything you can think of or imagine, and of course, it can't be done. To the religious who think like that, I ask them to prove that fairies don't exist. Or that dragons don't exist. You can see where I'm coming from I hope.
Logic states that just because you cannot prove something doesn't exist, it doesn't automatically follow that it does exist.