I came across this interesting argument via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, and found it unsurprisingly made me follow the links and think about the question, myself.
I find that Massimo Pigliucci's statement that atheism is basically a philosophical approach is more in line with my own way of thinking about it.
Second, let us turn to atheism. Once again: it is a philosophical, not a scientific position. Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry. Consider again the example of a creationist who maintains in the face of evidence that the universe really is 6,000 years old, and that it only looks older because god arranged things in a way to test our faith. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that could contradict that sort of statement, but a philosopher can easily point out why it is unreasonable, and that furthermore it creates very serious theological quandaries.
In my case, as a matter of skeptical inquiry, I say the jury is out on the existence of God, but I confess that I lack any aparatus to actually test this knowledge in any absolute sense. Having nothing that persuades me that there is such an entity, however, I chose to proceed from the position that there isn't one, since in any event, even if I assumed there to be one, the nature of that entity is unknown to me. I use science to inform my impressions of the world around me, and find that, since I have adopted a materialistic point of view, that facts and statistics inform my viewpoint regarding such things as politics and lifestyle choices. But I can't say that God is scientifically "disproved" to me, even if developments in biology or cosmology have made the assumption of a "divinity" unnecessary.
Also, I am in basic agreement with him in respects to people who have adopted an atheist worldview, but do not relate to the material universe with respect to politics or economics or medicine with the same skeptical rigor generally used in scientific inquiry. They have espoused a philosophy, but it is epistemological only--as to the actual methods of scientific thought applied across the board--well, they don't use it.
Jerry Coyne (whose Why Evolution is True I might get around to any day, now) takes the position that most atheists are "weak sense atheists" in that they find no support for the notion of God (well, that would be me) but claims that because it's evidence-based, it's scientific:
What about the “probabilistic” form of WSA? That’s equally scientific. If there could be evidence for a phenomenon, but repeated investigations fail to give that evidence, one becomes less willing to accept that phenomenon. In this sense, being a WSA is no different from making a perfectly scientific claim like this: “I think it pretty improbable that the Loch Ness monster exists.” After all, if there were a giant reptile trapped in the Loch, presumably you could find it. And people have tried. They’ve looked underwater with cameras, hung around the lake trying to photograph it, and conducted sonar and satellite investigations. Nothing has turned up. In all probability, the Monster is a myth.
Based on these searches, is it then a “philosophical position” to say that it’s highly unlikely that Nessie exists? I don’t think so. It’s an evidence-based position — in other words, a scientific one. Similarly, the god that many people believe in, who is said to be beneficent, answer prayers, heal the sick, come back from the dead, and the like, is contradicted by evidence: the failure of prayer and spiritual healing, the existence of inexplicable evil, and so on. There are a million ways that a theistic god could have shown itself to us Earthlings, but it hasn’t happened. There is no more evidence for a world-touching God than for the Loch Ness Monster.
But then, I don't have actual evidence for bosons, dark matter, or "strings" either, but the likelihood of these could be termed "probabalistic" and still be scientific theories. As luminiferous ether once could have. Whether I consider atheism to be scientifically provable relies on my understanding of what scientific proof is. Which leads me to my last link, to Russell Blackford, which sums things up a bit:
We should come to a weaker conclusion than Pigliucci's. Pace Pigliucci, it is not wrong in principle to put scientific arguments for atheism (or for theism). It cannot be ruled out in advance that the kinds of arguments used by scientists will be decisive.
Even if the scientific arguments are not decisive by themselves, they may be when taken in conjunction with other considerations. In that case, they may still be of crucial importance in reaching an atheistic (or, indeed, theistic) conclusion and in that case it appears unfair to criticise somebody like Richard Dawkins for overstepping the bounds.
After all, philosophers are forced to draw upon resources from other disciplines. Why can't a biologist do likewise, obtaining important data and sub-conclusions from his own field, while also relying on input from (say) historians and philosophers for the full argument? If we accept that picture, scientists in the relevant field(s) do have an advantage over people with no scientific training. The advantage will consist in a the possession of both a useful knowledge base and the skills in developing relevant kinds of arguments. While the ultimate conclusion may turn out to require assistance from, say, historians or philosophers, that does not render scientific qualifications irrelevant.
In any event, Pigliucci is surely correct about one thing: the questions relating to theism, atheism, and philosophy of religion in general, should be investigated rationally. Philosophers, historians, and various kinds of scientists may all have a role to play in that investigation (though it is still possible that one or other set of arguments by itself will be decisive). There is no "way of knowing", lying somewhere beyond the realm of rational inquiry, that can solve the problem for us. We are left with our reason and intelligence, and the ongoing advance of knowledge.
While I suppose that we have not yet the means to disprove god, the question remains: Just what kind of god are we disposing of? Increases in our field of understanding of how things work should narrow this question down considerably. Which leads me to discuss the above puicture--the image of dominoes--
The god that science would have to end up dealing with is merely the kind of ontological or cosmological god that set the "dominoes" of the universe up and started them falling. That god is not a moral arbiter and still less a personal "anything". Its relationship to us would remain undefined in terms of how we and it (a very large, complex, ancient, and astounding "it") interact, if we could be said to interact at all. That old Domino-Tipper wouldn't really have a thing to say about what we eat, wear, or love.
My understanding of that is solely philosophical. It doesn't comfort me like religion comforts others. It only satisfies my need for intellectual honesty.
(Funny personal note--I once took Bible instruction at the Salvation Army up the street from me when I was about ten or eleven. This was part of a weird experience I had as a kid growing up agnostic--my parents never baptized me nor took me to church, nor went themselves. I sort of recognized that I was "culturally Christian" in the sense that my near-relations were Christian, but as for myself, I was unable to self-identify that way. I read the Bible and Homeric translations--having come across Greek and Roman myths via the movies "Xanadu" and "Clash of the Titans" on HBO--contemporaneously, which led to a recognition, satisfied by a reading of a Norse mythology book, that there were many different stories, just like there were many different languages. But since most people I knew were Christians, I thought I should investigate their manner of belief--and so when my Christian friends played at "Take the pagan to Church", I went.
Anyway, because I was enamoured of the pagans, I was aware that the ancient Greeks had many philosophers and they actually thought about things for a living, which totally sounded awesome to me. When I wasn't reading books that my teachers thought were too "grown" for me, I was thinking about things. So when one of the Bible school instructors asked me what I would like to be when I was an adult, I said I would like to be a philosopher.
Her reply was that I should be very careful about that profession, because if I thought too long and hard about certain things, it could lead me away from God.
This apparently worked. I still find the story amusing.)
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