Beyond Possibilianism: Why I Am a Maybetarian (Reformed)

This will probably be considered completely uncivil of me (perish the thought! Get me my fainting couch!). Nonethless, I can’t help but laugh at this misguided attempt by David Eagleman at reframing the debate between the faithful and us heathens as being between two extremes, with true-agnosticism — redefined with a pithy neologism — is the only rational point of view.

When there is a lack of meaningful data to weigh in on a problem, good scientists are comfortable holding many possibilities at once, rather than committing to a particular story over others. In light of this, I have found myself surprised by the amount of certainty out there.

And whose absolute certainty is getting David’s goat? The religious folks going door to door? The people who argue that because some small aspect of the universe is not presently accounted for and understood by science, the whole scientific endeavour must be wrong and their very narrow definition of a deity must be right?

Nope! Of course, he’s talking about those DAMN DIRTY NEW ATHEISTS!

Take, for example, this decade’s books by the new atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Their books are brilliant and insightful, but sometimes feed a widespread misconception that scientists don’t have the capacity to gambol around beyond the available data. Some readers walk away from these books with the impression that scientists think they have the big picture solved – if not in detail, at least in outline.

Never mind that these “new atheists” are saying basically the same thing as atheists throughout the ages have said. They’re also backing up their assertions with science that disproves fundamental aspects of specific dogmas, and by uncovering those dogmas’ falseness, have convinced themselves (and rightly so, in my opinion) that none of the gods postulated by today’s religions are correct. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins proclaims himself a mere 6 (well, 6.9) on a seven-point scale of certainty, where 1 is certainty that there is a specific deity, and 7 is certainty that there are no deities whatsoever. That is not… IS NOT… a 7. That is not “certainty” in the same sense as a religious believer’s certainty in their particular deity, the vast majority of whom would immediately peg their meter at a 1 without reservations or a second thought.

But good science is always open-minded, and the history of science is one of surprises and overturnings. Science is nothing but careful thinking, and careful thinking encourages an appreciation of the complexity of the world. The complexity encourages us to maintain several possibilities at once. In a single lifetime, we may have no way to remove the ambiguities from these possibilities.

Science is the only way to objectively observe this universe and winnow out how it actually works. This assertion is not an article of faith — it is in the definition of science, because science IS the objective observation of events and experimentation to prove or disprove the hypotheses that humans make to abstract reality and gain understanding of its inner workings. This includes how reality came to be. And it is in diametrical opposition to the specific claims of specific dogmatic institutions that require — no, DEMAND — that science, scientific progress, and the scientific understanding of the mechanisms by which this universe works, must be false. In toto. Because dogmatic faiths require every article of faith to stand, lest the house of cards comes down, they demand that science operate the same way, trying to have well-evidenced phenomena like evolution swept under the rug because those phenomena are antithetical to some core value of theirs. And because that well-evidenced phenomenon is offensive to them, science must defer, because to do otherwise is just being mean to those with religious sensibilities!

I often refer to myself as an agnostic atheist, because gnosticism defines belief that a deity’s existence is knowable, while theism defines belief in a specific deity. I do not consider the existence of a deity, as defined as possibly outside the scope of this universe, to be knowable with one hundred percent certainty. And yet, I still call myself an atheist.

Why is that? Because it is a strong improbability — very nearly an impossibility, in fact — that this universe, with its natural processes, was created in an unnatural manner by a supernatural being. Even if you wedge the door open to that minuscule possibility, there are enough truth-claims proven false in every single religion ever invented by man, that I can safely say that there is absolutely no religion represented on Earth, in all its six billion plus iterations (one for every human on the planet) that represents reality any better than the true open-mindedness that comes with the scientific pursuit.

Calling yourself a “Possibilian” is beyond ludicrous, David. Not only because there already exists a word that defines exactly the position you’re staking — hint, it’s called “agnosticism” — but because the word agnostic is not mutually exclusive from, and does not address, your atheism. Because you do not explicitly believe in a god or gods, you are an atheist. It is that simple. This isn’t linguistic prescriptivism, this isn’t verbal legerdemain, this isn’t a matter of opinion — it is the agreed-upon definition of the word atheist. And you’re one. You’re living it. Own it.

And while you’re at it, please do us all a favor and drop the “New Atheist” canard. They’re just plain atheists. That’s all. Well, that, and scientists, and far better and more prolific authors than you or I could ever hope to be.

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Beyond Possibilianism: Why I Am a Maybetarian (Reformed)
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5 thoughts on “Beyond Possibilianism: Why I Am a Maybetarian (Reformed)

  1. 1

    I’ve just about had enough of these New Possibilianists. These few words from the quote above, sum up their entire position:

    “Their books are brilliant and insightful, but….”

    Well great, mate – write a better one. One with nice words in it. And not too long. And make sure the title is nice and vague so that no one will know what the author’s position is until after they’ve read it. In fact, they shouldn’t know what the author’s position is even after they’ve read it, because that might upset some people. Well actually, even just the idea that it might upset some people is simply too horrid to think about, so we’d best avoid that possibility altogether.

  2. 2

    That’s exactly what they’re going for, those that fall into the “accomodationist” camp — the idea that science should lay off on trying to explain those gaps within which people happen to have been storing their gods. You might upset someone by explaining where the universe came from!

    Problem is, if we allow this cordoning off of what’s kosher to investigate and what must be sacrosanct, we all lose. If we investigate every truth claim in this universe, then those areas that are verboten in the “accomodationists'” eyes become no longer a matter of “faith”, but rather a matter of denying evidence. And we all know how well that’s working for the ID community in beating back the truth value of the evolutionary theory and all the evidence for it.

    If we back off on finding the truth about deities, in deference to people who believe in specific deities, we cede ground, and that will not be the end of the ground we cede. The believers will push back against specific aspects of reality that they find unpalatable. Like evolution. Or heliocentrism. Or the germ theory of disease. And how much ground are you really willing to cede to these irrational elements?

  3. 3

    I’m not entirely sure that’s what the accommodationists are after. I think they have an odd kink somewhere in their makeup that says that confidence, particularly confidence that someone else is wrong, is some kind of sin, religious or secular. This blinds them to the difference between confidence and certainty, which does create its own problems.

    I’m generally with them when they’re preaching the evils of certainty, but I have a much harder time finding that certainty where they try to point it out. I think they may too, which is why their complaints about noisy atheists are so general and reductionist.

  4. 4

    My biggest problem with his criticism that atheism is a null statement because “we don’t yet have a grand unifying theory of the universe”. We can’t say there is no god, because we don’t know everything about the cosmos. We might one day understand everything about our own universe, the big bang, and if it’s all part of a larger multiverse, but we will never be able to see beyond that.

    There will always be an uncertainty of the universe, unless humans evolve for millions of more years and find a way to travel through parallel universes. Taking his logic that how little we understand about the universe makes atheism a void statement would be tantamount to saying; we haven’t yet discovered every animal species on our planet, so therefore there’s still a possibility that unicorns or chupacabras exist somewhere, so being stern on the assumption that they don’t exist stems from a problem of creative inflexibility in one’s hypothesis. That doesn’t sound like science, nor logical reasoning for that matter. I honestly don’t think he truly understands the questions that define atheist, agnostic or even atheist-agnostic. His argument is weak.

  5. 5

    Exactly right. As Stephanie pointed out, there’s much less certainty on the side of “probably no gods”, and the burden of proof is on those who claim to have proof of a particular god, no matter how much kicking and screaming the theists put up, and no matter how often they claim that one cannot say “probably no gods” without first searching every corner of this universe.

    Thanks for the comment, Jenni!

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