The only people I fear
are those who never have doubts
Save us all from arrogant men,
and all the causes they're for
I won't be righteous again
I'm not that sure anymore
- “Shades Of Grey”, Billy Joel
Like Billy Joel (an atheist, by the way), people who never doubt their own belief systems concern me. I once stopped seeing a cute, lawyer-type* because he was annoyingly certain that he knew exactly how the world functioned and where he and everyone else fit into that world. It goes without saying that I could never have dated Ayn Rand.
Atheism is often pushed aside as the more obnoxious half-sibling of polite, well-behaved agnosticism. After all, since we are merely human and therefore not all knowing, isn’t it only reasonable to admit we might not know the “truth” of reality? Isn’t it possible there IS a god and we just don’t know it? Aren’t we being awwwwfully arrogant by declaring ourselves atheists instead of agnostics?
Sure, I’ll admit it: I’m not absolutely certain of anything. While I find it improbable, I suppose I could be a brain in a vat somewhere and only think I’m really living in this reality. Or, this reality could exist, but very, very smart aliens (or mice) might be staging my life as some sort of grand experiment. Or, maybe my life is as the “personal god” folks describe, and I live in a universe where god** has at least some degree control over my life and/or thoughts and just finds it a grand joke to not give me some sort of sign that he exists. (shrugs) Any of the above could be the case, I suppose.
However, to me, none of these maybes are relevant to the way I live. Frankly, the only “stuff” I have to evaluate this world is the result of my senses and thought processes, and the conclusions I can draw from such. I have no need to add a god into the equation, and so I don’t, just as I don’t decide I’m a brain in a vat just because it is a possibility. With a bit of imagination, I could conjure up no end of “reasons why I am here”, but which would I chose and where would I stop? It seems easier and far more logical to thoroughly explore what lies in front of me than to invent unnecessary “whys”. I exist. I’ll just go from there.
Sure, we natural-world minded rationalists change our minds about many things many, many times. Newton was right and then he wasn’t. We accept that as we learn more, ideas change. We constantly find new ways of evaluating the world and accept that sometimes our old evaluations were incorrect. This doesn’t shatter the idea of science nor does it make living a life based on our knowledge of the rational world arrogant. Through the processes of repetition and peer review, science constantly sets itself up to be proven wrong again and again and again. That’s okay. We’re satisfied with the movement towards correctness rather than correctness as a position.
All this flux doesn’t justify agnosticism. My atheism isn’t an elaborate construction involving multitudes of facts and assumptions—it’s an acceptance of the evidence gathered from the physical, sensory reality in which I reside. I don’t see evidence for Zeus or Allah or Jehovah or whoever. I didn’t see evidence for any of these gods yesterday or the day before or the day before. I highly doubt that such evidence will present itself tomorrow. I suppose I could be wrong. However, as described above, I could be wrong about a lot of things. I don’t wander around remaining agnostic about whether I might gain the power to levitate tomorrow or whether I’ll discover I’m really a Russian princess (or philosopher). Sure, I could be wrong about a lot, including whether or not there is a god. However, it’s just so darn improbable, it doesn’t seem worth the energy. Within the scope of what I find reasonable and likely, I’m happy to declare myself an atheist.
* I suppose, to be entirely honest, I should also disclose that he was a Republican. I’m ridiculously socially liberal and not so far behind in the economic areas either… but I’d like to at least pretend that I wouldn’t stop dating someone just because he was a Republican.
** Obviously, I could also never date god. How much more arrogant can one get than claims of omnipotence and omniscience?
