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Criticism of atheism is criticism of the concepts, validity, or impact of atheism, including associated political and social implications. Criticisms include arguments based on theistic positions, arguments pertaining to morality or what are thought to be the effects of atheism on the individual, or of the assumptions, scientific or otherwise, that underpin atheism. Criticism of atheism is complicated by the fact that there exist multiple definitions and concepts of atheism (and little consensus among atheists), including practical atheism, theoretical atheism, negative and positive atheism, implicit and explicit atheism, and strong and weak atheism, with critics not always specifying the subset of atheism being criticized. Various agnostics and theists have criticised atheism for being an unscientific, or overly dogmatic and definitive position to hold, some with the argument that 'absence of evidence cannot be equated with evidence for absence'. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that a failure of theistic arguments might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism, and points to the observation of an apparently "fine-tuned Universe" as more likely to be explained by theism than atheism. Oxford Professor of Mathematics John Lennox holds that atheism is an inferior world view to that of theism, and attributes to C.S. Lewis the best formulation of Merton's Thesis that science sits more comfortably with theistic notions, on the basis that Men became scientific in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th century "Because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.' In other words, it was belief in God that was the motor that drove modern science." The leading American geneticist Francis Collins also cites Lewis as persuasive in convincing him that theism is the more rational world view than atheism. Other criticisms focus on perceived effects on morality and social cohesion. The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, a deist, imagined the implications of godlessness in a disorderly world ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"). The father of Classical Liberalism, John Locke, believed that the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos. Edmund Burke, a name associated with both modern conservatism and liberalism, saw religion as the basis of civil society and wrote that "man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long". Pope Pius XI wrote that Communist atheism was aimed at "upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization". In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II criticised a spreading "practical atheism" as clouding the "religious and moral sense of the human heart" and leading to societies which struggle to maintain harmony.〔(Address by Pope John Paul II to the Bishops of USA on their Ad Limina Visit, 28 May 1993 )〕 The advocacy of atheism by some of the more violent exponents of the French Revolution, the subsequent militancy of Marxist-Leninist atheism, and prominence of atheism in totalitarian states formed in the 20th century is often cited in critical assessments of the implications of atheism. In his ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'', Burke railed against "atheistical fanaticism". The 1937 papal encyclical ''Divini Redemptoris'' denounced the atheism of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, which was later influential in the establishment of state atheism across Eastern Europe and elsewhere, including Mao Zedong's China, Communist North Korea and Pol Pot's Cambodia. Critics of atheism often associate the actions of 20th-century state atheism with broader atheism in their critiques. Various poets, novelists and lay theologians, among them G. K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, have also criticized atheism. A maxim popularly attributed to Chesterton holds that "He who does not believe in God will believe in anything."〔http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/frequently-asked-questions/cease-to-worship/〕 == Definitions and concepts of atheism == Atheism is the absence of belief that any deities exist,〔 〕 the position that there are no deities, or the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.〔 * *(page 175 in 1967 edition) 〕 Agnostic atheists contend that there are insufficient grounds for strong atheism, the position that no deities exist,〔Anthony Kenny ''What I Believe'' see esp. Ch. 3 "Why I am not an atheist"〕 but at the same time believe that there are insufficient grounds for belief in deities. Ignostics propose that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and that the question of the existence of God is meaningless. Some atheists argue that there is a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities.〔Various authors. "Logical Arguments for Atheism". Internet Infidels, ''The Secular Web Library''. Retrieved 2007-APR-09.〕 Rationales for not believing in any deity include the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the argument from nonbelief. Other arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to the social to the historical. In general, atheists regard the arguments for the existence of God as unconvincing or flawed.〔See e.g. and 〕 Analytic philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig has listed some of the prominent arguments used by proponents of atheism and points out numerous problems:〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Theistic Critiques Of Atheism )〕 * "The Presumption of Atheism" is the claim that in the absence of evidence for the existence of God, we should presume that God does not exist. Craig argues that this argument conflates atheism with agnosticism and that protagonists of the argument often arbitrarily re-define "atheism" to indicate merely the absence of belief in God rather than what they originally intended, which was a knowledge claim to the non-existence of God. Other advocates of the argument insist that it is precisely the absence of evidence for theism that justifies their claim that God does not exist. The problem with that understanding is captured by the aphorism from forensic scientists, that "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." The absence of evidence is evidence of absence only in cases in which, were the postulated entity to exist, we should expect to have more evidence of its existence than we do. Craig argues that the atheist would need to prove that if God existed, God would provide more evidence of His existence than what we have such as in the case of Christian theism: the scientific evidence for the creation of the universe from nothing, other arguments from natural theology, and historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. * "The Hiddenness of God" is the claim that if God existed, God would have prevented the world's unbelief by making his existence starkly apparent. Craig argues that the problem with this argument is that there is no reason to believe that any more evidence than what is already available would increase the amount of people to come to believe in God. * "The Incoherence of Theism" is the claim that the notion of God is incoherent. Craig argues that a coherent doctrine of God's attributes can be formulated based on scripture, like Medieval theologians had done, and "Prefect Being Theology" and that the argument actually helps in refining the concept of God. * "The Problem of Evil" can be split into two different concerns: the "intellectual" problem of evil concerns how to give a rational explanation of the co-existence of God and evil and the "emotional" problem of evil concerns how to comfort those who are suffering and how to dissolve the emotional dislike people have of a God who would permit such evil. The latter can be dealt with in a diverse manner. Concerning the "intellectual" argument, it is often cast as an incompatibility between statements such as "an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God exists" and "the quantity and kinds of suffering in the world exist". Craig argues that no one has shown that both statements are logically incompatible or improbable with respect to each other. Others use another version of the intellectual argument called the "evidential problem of evil" which claims that the apparently unnecessary or "gratuitous" suffering in the world constitutes evidence against God's existence. Craig argues that it is not clear that the suffering that appears to be gratuitous actually is gratuitous for various reasons, one of which is similar to objection to utilitarian ethical theory, that it is quite simply impossible for us to estimate which action will ultimately lead to the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure in the world. T.J. Mawson makes a case against atheism by citing some lines of evidence and reasoning such as the high level of fine-tuning whereby the life of morally sentient and significantly free creatures like humans has implications. On the maximal multiverse hypothesis, he argues that in appealing to infinite universes one is in essence explaining too much and that it even opens up the possibility that certain features of the universe still would require explanation beyond the hypothesis itself. He also argues from induction for fine tuning in that if one supposed that infinite universes existed there should be infinite ways in which observations can be wrong on only one way in which observations can be right at any point in time, for instance, that the color of gems stay the same every time we see them. In other words, if infinite universes existed, then there should be infinite changes to our observations of the universe and in essence be unpredictable in infinite ways, yet this is not what occurs. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Criticism of atheism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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