One wonders why there are still atheists today

It is a wonder why today there are still atheists around. When one looks at the advancements in astronomy, physics and mathematics it is remarkable how they are still around. Most people of scientific and atheistic persuasion are now turning agnostic. I still see of course atheists with utter hatred for theists. These people come from a Positivist outlook. If that term is foreign to you, please do a wikipaedia search on the word. Briefly it is someone who needs empirical evidence in order to know something exists or is true.

Positivism is now passe. People in the social science and education

disciplines are now going post-Modern, and by that it means Modernism of the Positivist outlook has been bunked. The only ones hanging around atheism are generally people who have swallowed the faulty arguments of either Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking.

Most of the arguments I have seen from today's atheists are not intellectual arguments, they are more emotional arguments rather than intellectual. Normally they do not argue but they ridicule, mock and demean the theist. As and example the the late Anthony Flew (well known atheist of the last decade), a well known atheist turned theist gave a fair and penetrating critique of Dawkins' God Delusion book. What arguments did Dawkins and his gang give for Flew's arguments? Well Dawkins and his gang said that Flew had a mental disorder when Flew became a theist. Is that an argument? You will find that the discussion on this quickly goes down the gutter road of offensive psychoanalysis - read Flew's counter found here.

Then there are those lay people and scientists (but not physicists nor astronomers and mathematicians) who follow Stephen Hawkings' statements in Grand Design. In fact there are fellow physicists who criticized Hawkings' conclusions in Grand Design and these people are hardly theists themselves. Examples would be Roger Penrose and Australian physicist Paul Davies. Books like this sell but not to fellow physicists but to the lay person who would like to see justification for the none existence of God.

One somewhat funny incident I recall was the interview of Hawkings' co-author, Leonard Mlodinow at Larry King Live. One of those interviewed pointed to Mlodinow, Godel's Theorems. Briefly one of Godel's theorems is that in a formal system that includes arithmetic, you will have true statements that have no proofs in arithmetic. Since we use arithmetic in our world of affairs, that implies we have true statements that we have no proof in our world of affairs. Mlodinow countered - ohh, but Godel's theorems pertain to axiomatic systems, physics is not like that, it is empirical and not axiomatic.

We can grin. We all know physics uses arithmetic, in fact it uses geometry which uses arithmetic, in fact physics uses calculus (analysis) which uses geometry which presupposes arithmetic. Mlodinow clearly does not appreciate the findings of Godel or he is a bit naive if not ignorant of the implications made by Godel's theorems.

Godel like almost all mathematicians believe in the validity of intuitions or intuitive truths. Mathematicians do that all the time when they accept an axiom or rule of inference. The majority of mathematicians are platonists not fictionalists or nominalist. Certainly Godel never accepted the notion that maths is just syntax. The proof of God is very intuitive. It is simple.

Something can not come out of nothing.

If you ask me who is believing a myth, I would say NOT those that believe in God, because the statement above is obvious, common sense and intuitive. The one who really believes in a myth is someone who believes that something CAN come out of nothing. This is the one who believes in a myth.