Science seeks for the truth as best it can.
"Why are we here?" We are here, there does not have to be a "reason".
"Is there a god?" We don't and can't know but due to the total lack of any evidence for a god, the safe assumption is no.
"What happens when we die?" We decay and are recycled.
You're taking metaphysical questions and giving literal answers. To say that you missed the point would be an understatement.
Atheism cannot be regarded as a religion. There is no central dogma, no handbook, no faith, no belief. Atheism is a religion like NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.
Nonsense. Atheism has nothing to do with postmodernism. It is postmodernist to argue that all possibilities are equal. Atheism cannot, by definition, be dogmatic or like a religion as it is simply a lack of belief and has no articles of faith. Your conclusion therefore was flawed.
Well actually I was making the point that some people adhere to atheism religiously. That the assertion that there is certainly no god is a belief, not a fact (will go into why Atheism is a belief later). I chose to say "Religion of Postmodernism" because postmodernism often presents points ironically.
Everything you listed is a function of us trying to make sense of the world and live in it. Nothing here to show we are anything but just animals. What would being more than just animal even mean? Dolphins have language. Are they just animals? Ants have complex living arrangements. Are they more than just animals? Our attempts may be more sophisticated but still just the actions of animals. Biologically, there is no such thing as more than just animal.
Do Dolphins write symphonies and plays? Do Ants design and create grandiose (if pointless) architectural feats? No, they don't. Wolves coordinate and cooperate in groups but it doesn't make it the same as a baseball team, does it? The simple fact that we DO try to make sense of the world around us shows that we are different from other animals. I know that biologically we are basically the same, that's why I said that we have biological functions in common.
I didn't say religion was good or bad, I said it was nonsense. The only sensible way to investigate the world is through the principles of peer reviewed scientific methods. Any scientist cheating in order to prove a theory will be found out as soon as the study is peer reviewed and other scientists cannot produce the same results. This is why it is not dogmatic the way revealed wisdom is.
Religion answers metaphysical questions rather than physical ones - if you try to interchange them, then yes, you will likely get nonsense in return such as the suggestion that the universe is a few thousand years old. That doesn't make Religion nonsense; Religion served a remarkable purpose for a period of time when science didn't exist in any recognizable form. It has comforted millions (if not billions) of people over millenia and that alone is a reasonable enough reason to me for it to not be considered "nonsense" whether you believe in it or not. So again: Religion and Science do not serve the same purpose, they deal with completely different worlds. A Scientist's opinion on Religion is only as valid as a Priest's opinion on Quantum Theory. Either declaring the other as nonsense is a result of arrogance, not enlightenment.
Actually it is very logical to dismiss the possibility of a deity. It is an illogical proposition (I will expand if necessary). Certainly we must allow the possibility of a deity, however because something is possible does not make it as probable as everything else. The two positions are not equiprobable. Of course we must all be technically agnostic however one can be a de facto atheist in that one lives under the assumption there is no god.
I disagree again, though more semantically. An atheists
believes that there is no God. An Agnostic Atheist (generally just called an Agnostic as Agnostic Theists don't seem all that common)
does not believe in a deity but accepts that it is impossible to know for sure. So I disagree on principle that "is is very logical to dismiss the possibility of a deity". Atheism is a belief system, Agnostic is a lack of a belief system.
Your ultimate questions can in principal be answered by science and certainly more likely that than by any other means I can think of.
Well you could provide an answer like the ones provided above but again the point will have been completely missed. You can say "there is no afterlife" but you're not dead, so you don't actually know. Science has contributed nothing to the answer, it's just an answer based on the lack of physical proof to a question that doesn't have a provable answer. It's a matter of belief, not knowledge.
