Quote:
Originally Posted by oats
@ Objective atheism only refers to not believing in the existence of a God or god. I've never heard anyone say that ghosts=gods, so by definition an atheist can believe in a ghost. Of course, this is unlikely, because the existence of ghosts is often associated with ideas of afterlife and supernatural gods etc, but it depends on what you believe a ghost is; they aren't necessarily exclusive beliefs.
I agree with you (and @ Witty) that aliens are far more likely to exist, but as of today there is just as much actual scientific evidence for alien existence as there is for the existence of a deity. IE none. so in terms of evidence or data-driven analysis, aliens are equivalent to a god insofar as belief is concerned. |
I think you're missing the point tho, nobody worthy of calling themself a scientist should be saying they believe in aliens, they should not be dealing in belief, a real scientist would just observe and draw conclusions based on those observations, that is their profession. Belief is unneccessary and it doesn't have any worth as far as I can see, if you can't prove something to be true then don't speak it as truth. Why would you convince yourself something is definitely true if you do not have any evidence for it? That is very unscientific, all a real scientist should be saying is 'based on the evidence, other life forms must exist' they can not claim to believe it until they see it, at which point belief is useless because it becomes knowledge. Making an hypothesis is not the same as believing something, because if the evidence shows this hypothesis to be wrong they will change it, people with beliefs will not do so because they have no evidence in the first place.