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Comment by justathrow2k | Hacker News Reader

I'd agree, it takes faith to know that there was no creator of the world, the same faith it takes to know there was. Just to clarify, I'm not arguing there's proof that 'God' does exist, I'm arguing there's no proof that 'God' doesn't exist. The original comparison falls short, the world can be proven to be round, not flat.

edit: a thanks in advance to all you enlightened fervent atheists for the down votes.

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Just to clarify, atheism isn't a faith claim, it's a skepticism of faith claims.

Just to clarify, I never said atheism required faith. Please, read the comment you responded to.

Atheism isn't having faith there is no creator, it's having the intellectual curiosity to doubt the existence of a creator.

Edited to be more honest.

It only takes courage for those who live in areas that are indoctrinated with dense religious ideology's who will suffer consequences for their actions. For most in the western world, it is not such a hard thing to identify oneself with.

edit: original response claimed it took courage to doubt the existence of a creator. It has since edited out to claim it simply takes intellectual curiosity. I would argue that the same intellectual curiosity could have the end result of someone having a belief in a singular creator of reality.

> I would argue that the same intellectual curiosity could have the end result of someone having a belief in a singular creator of reality.

Possible, but not likely, given how many intellectually curious people have independently reinvented atheism but no religion has been independently reinvented.

Religion and belief in a singular creator are not the same thing. Furthermore, I don't really believe you have any credible way of producing a valid number of 'intellectually curious' individuals who have made the choice to believe in a singular creator versus not.

edit: misunderstanding of mutually exclusive and added some more words.

It's far more likely to be the other way round. Atheism was only really formed about 300 years ago, and by that time the world had been explored and the printing press had been invented. In contrast, all of the ancient religions, formed in completely disconnected continents, had the notion of a creator at their centre.

> Atheism was only really formed about 300 years ago

This denies the existence of Ancient Greek atheists, and people who were skeptical of religion in general before the modern era.

I think you mean agnostic not atheism then.

No. I'm atheist, and that is my worldview. Saying I'm wrong about my own philosophy is nonsensical.

I'm also not alone: My definition of the word seems to be the most common one among the current atheist movement.

Agnosticism is a belief that we can't possibly know whether there's a supernatural. I don't hold that view. My view is a skepticism of the supernatural, which is atheism.

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