Haha more support for the "it only works if you don't think about it" case for religion. It always amazes me how faithers can say some really idiotic things and not hear what the words sound like coming out of their mouths.

Shoot, I just saw this after posting a question about faith as an atheist.

I suppose with so much of our culture implicitly acknowledging a god or some such holy thing, the idea of someone having no belief whatsoever in an afterlife and almighty deity is foreign to them. So many stories, movies, TV shows, imply that there is a god watching over us. In other words, it's not an angry patriarch or matriarch beating belief into kids with a ruler so much as noticing a matter-of-fact assumption that there is a god in every situation--real or fiction--we experience.

I suppose the "it takes more faith to be an atheist" stems from having some realization like "You know what? I think this is all bullshit" that shakes up the ubiquitous belief in a higher power. As in, it requires the thinker to REALLY step back and consider what many would deem impossible. But it's not like you're lifting weights or disowning a child; it's just a depth of thought.

Ultimately, though, it's a complete absence of faith. That's the point. I suppose if you think it takes faith, it's because you think there IS a god.

Addison is trying to suggest that faith in the scientific method requires a greater leap of faith than the leap of faith he finds himself making in believing in his religion. He is in some small measure correct inasmuch as because he applies no true critical thinking skills to his religious beliefs, which in truth require nothing more than wishful thinking, whereas the acceptance of a scientific understanding of "life, the universe and everything" is dependant upon either a rational understanding of science, or the assumption that the scientific community knows what it's taking about. As Addison doesn't understand the science, he personally is left to apply faith to people (scientists) who make clear that scientific understanding is subject to change in the light of new evidence. THIS, to someone raised in a faith predicated on the notion that all they're being taught by their religious beliefs is based upon the immutable and unerring word of god can be, for such people, a harder road to accept than their religious beliefs, which by their nature are a pleasant, sugar coated placebo as compared to science.

he problem of that statement is that "the great truths" of religion and faith in it are simply non-existent. True believers want to bestow the "gifts" of heaven and eternal lives upon themselves. Wishing for the non-existent and impossible does not make it happen.