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.
