"No one knows enough to be an atheist." Thus Deepak Chopra, best-selling author and "alternative medicine" guru, recently trivialized one of the deepest issues in human knowledge: How is it that we come to unbelief? This issue is more universal than religion and goes to the heart of everything we are and what we have achieved as a culture. Why do we believe in an expanding universe that is 13.7 billion years old? Why do we not believe in faeries, astrologers and the virtues of snake oil? Why do we believe in evolution? Why do we not believe that President Obama was born in Kenya? How do we assess the dangers of global warming?
Science is not about absolute immutable truth but is all about building levels of confidence in ideas and expressing them in terms of theories or laws. Quite literally, science asks and answers what you can bet on a theory. A few dollars? Human lives? Every day, we bet thousands of lives on the laws of aerodynamics and we have bet the existence of our society on the theory of electromagnetism. How did we come to have such towering confidence in a theory that was developed purely from human curiosity and is only slightly older than the theory of evolution?
Establishing scientific confidence rests on two foundations. The first is to use theories to predict outcomes and test them by experiment. Every test puts the theory on the line and a wrong prediction falsifies the theory. But every time the theory survives a test, confidence grows. The second foundation came from the Franciscan order of monks and their belief in the importance of simplicity in all things. Ockham's razor is the ultimate arbiter between theories that describe the same natural phenomena: always choose the simpler theory.
Theories of faeries can be beautiful, appealing and even poetic but they rarely give useful predictions and become very convoluted if they are to avoid falsification by simple experiments. Ockham's razor removes bad theories just as most of us discard extreme conspiracy theories: not because we can prove them wrong but because there are simpler, more powerful explanations that fit the data and provide better predictions. Most conspiracy theories are simply too improbable. So we tend to believe that President Obama was born in Hawaii, astronauts went to the Moon and our daily lives are not ruled by the positions of planets. Science cannot prove these things with absolute certainty but the discipline of science advises us what can rely upon and with what level of certainty. Thus we have used science to rise above the quagmire of superstition and build a complex and vibrant society, confident in our origins in a Big Bang and the evolutionary processes that brought us to this point.
As a humanist, I value the remarkable achievements of science and what we have come to understand about the universe and I equally treasure the human experience of that universe. To understand one but not experience the other would be tragic: every life is a very short, rare and precious moment in the universe and should be lived fully and completely with all the chaotic, wonderful aspects of being human. For many, the human experience of the universe involves a relationship with a personal God. As an atheist I disagree with their idea but cannot prove them wrong. I view their belief as an extremely improbable hypothesis with no predictive power but, in disagreement, I honor the journey that has led them to their belief. Just as the knowledge that my love for my wife involves oxytocin can never diminish the experience of our lives and the shared joy of that love.
Atheists and people of faith have many things in common. One of them is to recognize the importance of the question of belief. Dr. Chopra's pablum: "No one knows enough to... " is fundamentally dishonest. It frames the issue in a way that diminishes the thought and effort of all who have wrestled with belief or unbelief and, even worse, gives the false reassurance that we can safely ignore the issue because no one can answer the question with certainty. Surely I do not have to remind Dr. Chopra that the journey is frequently more important than the destination.
Robert J. Asher: Why I Am an Accommodationist
Bishop Pierre Whalon: God Does Not Exist...
Amy Chan: Deepak Chopra Enlightens Vancouverites at Launch of the Chopra Yoga Center
So, then:
The Atheist is Me (I, the Self) not believing in My Self.
The Agnostic is Me not sure whether or not I believe in My Self.
The Believer is Me believing in My Self.
This is the most trenchant irony: I, that is, the Self, is all three (Atheist, Agnostic, Believer) but I is unaware, unwilling, or unable to accept that It is God.
And the distance between the two is therefore not a hair but an entire scalp plus a cranial bone. And that, in most people, is pretty thick.
:-)
but
I doubt: therefore I might not exist.
--- God
A firm belief serves to give certainty in an uncertain world. I suspect that for a lot of the more rigid believers, fear of uncertainty underlies the unwillingness to question anything that might shake the foundations. We should teach our children tolerance of uncertainty and delight in unanswered questions.
Atheists who say they know no gods exist are gnostic atheists. They are akin to gnostic theists (the majority) who say they know their god (and only their god) exists.
Agnosticism is not really a position on gods (although it's popularly perceived to be one) - it's a position on knowledge, a recognition of the distinction between knowledge and belief.
As an agnostic atheist, I have no belief in gods - I base that on the fact that I've seen no evidence supporting the idea that gods exist. However, I recognize that it's a belief, an opinion, and that others have equally valid beliefs of their own.
I would agree with the latter part IF that journey had involved any real thinking and active choice on their part. When the VAST majority of religionists 'happen' to believe in the particular brand of superstition they happen to have been indoctrinated with since childhood ( and strangely (!) not one of the other 40000+ current brands, then one cannot, with any sense of decency or rationality "honour" that indoctrinated belief. It is akin to the testimony of a torture victim.
But very good article in general -especially debunking the Chopra falsehood of "no one knows enough to be an atheist". Chopra fails to undertand that atheism isn't a dogmatic position that claims 100% certainly like the religious position. It is a pragmatic, intellectual and reasoned position based on the evidence that every person, religious or non religious - applies to the world around them.
Except that in the case of (the idea of the god version they were brought up with - and only that one ?!), religious people choose to mislay these faculties.
And how exactly is identifying as a humanist dishonest?
But it's good you tried. Now at least we know where you stand.
:-)
Bingo!
Careful -- some here might object even to that...
"...a lot of us just want to spend our turn celebrating the gift..."
...and definitely to that! A gift? No, no -- too poetic, metaphorical; implies too much intent. Too maudlin. The "gift" of chance -- please! Kindly mold your language to fit the scientific paradigm -- objective, precise, empirical. To the extent that any creativity creeps into our discourse, "truth" is proportionally undermined.
And, if it's really necessary -- ;)
Had this debate with my brother once, who has a PhD in Computational Physics. I said I was grateful for the gift. He said - "To whom? Being grateful implies you are grateful TO somebody." I said - "No it doesn't. I can just be grateful." I don't disagree that this is a huge line to cross. But I do wonder at how convenient the argument is that you have nothing to be grateful for because you have no God to be grateful to, and how that frees you from the burdens of gratitude. "Truth", I have noticed, looks very different on the two sides of this line. Where you stand controls what you see. What you see controls how you act. How you act controls the consequences of those actions. You can choose to stand in a place where you have nothing to be grateful for, and allow that to control your perceptions, your actions, and your consequences. Life is a guessing game.
until your experiment provides evidence that chance created life forms from star dust that is what he means that no one knows enough to be an atheist.
but it matters not something much more powerful than evidence or lack of evidence is beliefs and all that goes along with it.
In science there is nothing more powerful that experimental evidence. In other disciplines there are other metrics ... . Religion is important to the experience of the universe for many but it gets problematic when religion starts making prognostications about scientifically testable hypotheses. God is a very powerful idea but it is all in the human mind.
Whaddya think? ;)
(someone who believes in a higher power but has concluded there is not enough info to be sure)
After someone told me that secular humanism was the highest form of vanity because it placed the self and people on the highest pedestal with nothing above them I retorted that the highest form of vanity is the assumption that a human can know the will of a supernatural being beyond their comprehension...been agnostic ever since
But, I can tell you when you are in a fetal position on the floor over life, proof by science is not very comforting.
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
― Mark Twain
And when I die it shall not inconvenience me in the slightest
Tell me, is it all atheists or just you two who can't seem to tell the difference between a metaphor and Metamucil?
:)