Afterall his beliefs are just as valid as ours. But the point is that they are beliefs, not facts. Atheism is a system of beliefs. These beliefs include many things that are invisible, as you pointed out; and many things that are not even detectable, like math and logic; and many things that are magical like fluids that flow uphill and current that has no resistence.

In short, atheists believe that facts like partcles are rigorously real whereas most others with scientific training think that all such concepts are just approximations. It is difficult to live in a world where nothing is known for sure, where everything is more or less an approximation. So atheists make a leap of faith to believe that it's all true even when they really cannot prove that it's true.

We all need beliefs, I believe, in order to function positively in the world. So lets respect all our beliefs. Unfortunately fundamentalists cannot do this as part of their belief system is that they are correct and all other beliefs are incorrect.

So if you think about it, atheists should be classified as fundamentalists, at least the scientific ones like Alexander who think they can prove everything (anything). The mark of a fundamentalist is that they are constantly saying that everybody else is wrong. So for me it is clear that scientific type atheists are fundamentalists. Scary isn't it?

• I believe in nothing but facts. - alexander - November 15, 2001 - 17:01 UTC
  • Do you take weather precautions? - dolphin - November 16, 2001 - 09:30 UTC