2006.02.16
A few weeks ago I read this post at nyqil.ORG. After leaving a couple of comments and exchanging a few e-mails with the blog author I decided to post here about my views on the subject.
If you look at the Wikipedia article on atheism, you are confronted with a vast array of meanings that can be confusing but are probably inevitable. The question, "Do you believe in God?" is so loaded you have to handle it with great care. If I am asked such a question the manner in which I handle it is by asking questions back. I have to ask what the person mean's by "God" and "believe". Does the person mean the "invisible man in the sky" as described by George Carlin? (I think Carlin's observation is a succinct description of most monotheistic theologies, with polytheism being "invisible people in the sky.") Or does the person mean "God" as in Einstein's God, the vague unknown mystery behind the deepest questions in physics and cosmology?
To the first traditional meaning of "God" I would have to label myself an atheist. From my perspective, which I try to keep as rational as possible, the claims made by Christians are no more convincing than those made by Jews or Muslims. Why should I give any more weight to stories of Yahweh or Allah than to those of Zeus or Odin? To some people being an atheist is just as dogmatic a position as being a theist. "How can you be sure God doesn't exist?" they might ask.
Here is where we come to the second part of my question from the start. What does it mean to "believe" something? Some people describe "belief" as a kind of faith. I prefer to think "belief" means something I think is true based on evidence. I believe the Earth is (almost) a sphere because of all the evidence for such a belief. Of course philosophically speaking we can't be absolutely sure all our beliefs are true. I believe the outside world exists, but I could be wrong. I might be a brain in a jar, or a simulation running in an alien computer. But based on the evidence so far, I believe the world does exist, that I am standing on a round planet, that we orbit the sun, and so on.
So I can't be sure that a certain god doesn't exist, and that technically classifies me as an agnostic. However I can't spend all day qualifying every statement I make with, "I could be wrong you know, brain in a jar, yadda yadda." I think it is safe to make certain judgments based on the evidence in the world. I am able to say, "I believe the Earth isn't flat," "I believe the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist," and "I believe Yahweh doesn't exist." Is that really such a dogmatic stance? Is disbelief in Santa Claus as irrational a claim to make as belief in Santa Claus? As you can guess, I believe the answer is no and that atheism is not just another dogmatic belief system.
The interesting link today is related to the topic above. It is an audio interview with Richard Dawkins at the Point of Inquiry website. In the interview Dawkins questions the idea that "faith" is a virtue. I will talk more about that question in my next post.
--Old blog comments:
February 17th, 2006 at 2:43 am
Georgie Says:
Gosh darn it...can't you talk about your butt hair
or something? For a non-Philosophy major, you
certainly are philosophical...hell, much more than
I, and I actually graduated with the damn degree!
February 17th, 2006 at 10:55 am
GNBenson Says:
If you are interested in butt hair, please check the always informative Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_hair
Note, it is not about my butt hair.
February 17th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
jer Says:
I'm with you, except for the part at the end where
you make your list of dogmatic statements that you
don't think aren't really that dogmatic.
The first one: "I believe the world is not flat" is a rational belief, which is based on overwhelming evidence, including but not limited to actual photographic and video evidence. Sure, the evidence might be fabricated by your experimenting alien sysadmins, but based on what can be observed, it seems to be true.
The next two of your dogmatic statements really
are dogmatic though.
(The tooth fairy one can be reasonably
disproved based on the number of people whose parents admit
to doing the enamel exchange, but that doesn't really mean
there isn't a tooth fairy doing some of these exchanges.)
You said you don't want to have to qualify them with the
"brain in jar yadda yadda" stuff, but with the simple
movement of two words, you avoid that altogether, and
once more become agnostic again, completely removing your irrational dogma.
If those statements were: "I don't believe the toothfairy exists," and "I don't believe Yahweh exists," your statements would then need no qualifications, would be based on only empirical observable evidence, and are no longer irrationally dogmatic.
I think what Randi actually meant at TAM4 is that it is impossible to be a skeptic while holding unimperical dogmatic beliefs about something. After much thought about this, I now fully agree with that.
It may make me wishy washy, but I think that's what skepticism is all about. You have to be wishy washy to really be skeptical; as you are basing everything on what can actually be observed, your findings have to change as soon as you observe new conflicting evidence. If you are holding irrational beleifs all along, I'm not sure you can make the shift that new conflicting evidence might require of you.
Sorry to get you complaints from the butt hair crowd, I didn't foresee that one at all. I bet you could put forth a well reasoned treatise on different aspects of butt hair and make it very entertaining. Did you know, for example, that most body hair is "designed" as a lubricant?
-February 17th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
GNBenson Says:
Are you saying the two statements, "I don't believe
Yahweh exists", and "I believe Yahweh does not exist"
are not equivalent? I think they mean the same thing
and are just variations in the grammar. Maybe I am missing something in your comment.
Ignoring the absolutist solipsistic position of not being sure about anything I think it is reasonable to say "I don't believe 'X' exists" for various Xs with no evidence for their existence. For me it doesn't pass the dogmatic line to fill in the 'X' with things like Yahweh, Santa Claus, Zeus, The Easter Bunny, or Carl Sagan's invisible dragon.
Now there is some grey area that will take more consideration and judgment. What if 'X' is "somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter a peanut shape asteroid"? Well I know many asteroids do exist there according to the overwhelming evidence. It is reasonable that a peanut shaped asteroid may exist. It is also reasonable one might not exist. So I will withhold judgment and say "I don't know". In this case I am a definite Peanut Asteroid Agnostic, and I would declare any Peanut Asteroid Atheists to be dogmatic in their baseless claims for the non-existence of a peanut shaped asteroid.
I think there are lines one has to draw where certain statements pass a test and become worthy of belief. Not all Xs are equal.
(Note 4179 Toutatis is a little peanutty)
-February 20th, 2006 at 2:08 am
jer Says:
Yes, I'm saying those 2 statements are not equivalent.
The first one: "I don't believe Yahweh exists," is stating that you don't have a belief in regards to the existence of Yahweh. No problem. Now on the other hand, if you say "I believe Yahweh doesn't exist," then you are stating a belief, one which cannot be proved by observation, and is therefore irrational. See what I'm getting at?
The next part of your comment falls within the statement that you don't have a belief, and I agree with it completely. It is perfectly reasonable to state that you don't believe in something when there's no evidence to support it. It's when you DO believe something without evidence that gets you in trouble.
For the record, I think "faith" is the magic bullet that allows people who hold irrational beliefs to rationalize them. Faith provides just as good an answer as scientific evidence (better actually) for many people. Faith is a pretty important thing. I know that when it comes to science, my faith in the process goes a long ways towards helping explain things.
-February 22nd, 2006 at 11:40 am
GNBenson Says:
I see what you are getting at, but I don't agree that the 2
statements are not equivalent. I don't think (believe?? haha)
that "I don't believe" equals "I don't have a belief". Again
this issue is more about English usage than philosophy, and I
think it's unrelated to the main point I was trying to make.
That main point being, it is OK to have a belief with no evidence if the "leap of faith" is small and within reason. (Of course there is room for debate on how small it should be.) Most of our beliefs can't be proved at all, which leads down the road to solipsism. As I said in my last comment, it seems prudent to not have a belief either way about the existence of a peanut shaped asteroid, but it is OK to have the belief that unicorns don't exist on the far-side of the Moon.
This belief about the non-existence of lunar unicorns may be technically irrational, but it isn't unreasonable. Maybe the unicorn example seems extreme but I don't see how it is any more fanciful than the world's religions.
Finally I would be reluctant to call my trust in the scientific method "faith". The whole point of "faith" is not needing evidence, but the world is overflowing with the evidence for the efficacy of the scientific method.
-February 24th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
jer Says:
Putting aside my insistance that not believing in
something is not the same as believing that that something
isn't true, I just have one question for you.
Who decides how small or large a leap of faith needs to be before it is no longer within reason and hence not rational?
This reminds me of a quote I recently heard which I'm attributing to Mark Twain. I can't find reference to it anywhere, so I really have no idea who said it, but it sounds like something he'd say :) "Man is a rational being; this allows him to rationalize any silly thing he believes." or something to that effect.
I find it interesting that the end of your comment begins to address a point that I brought up on the faith essay, seeing how you hadn't seen my comment on the faith essay, and I hadn't seen this one.
-February 24th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
GNBenson Says:
Who decides? I decide of course! Haha. That is the key
question though. That is where we can debate on a particular
topic and try to make a fair judgment. I think it really has
to be done on a case by case basis since you can't draw any
clean lines between lunar unicorns, water walking saviors, UFOs,
Bigfoot, cancer causing cell phones, or atoms. Where does belief
in any one of these things move from "reasonable trust" to "blind faith"?