A friend of mine in Buffalo, the son of
a Methodist preacher, labelled me as the only “evangelical atheist”
he'd come across. I was young then. As part of the conversation, he
offered me an “out”: Wasn't I an agnostic, or skeptic? I
responded that for me as a scientist it would be a cop-out to be just
agnostic or skeptical in the face of the overwhelming lack of
evidence in favor of … whatever it is that is not out there. It is
true that being skeptical or agnostic about WIITINOT, fairies or the
Great Halloween Pumpkin is not quite the same as being skeptical or
agnostic about say the ether or caloric. The theories of the ether or
caloric made clearcut predictions (which were then falsified by
counter-evidence), unlike religion or String Theory. So the existence
of WIITINOT has not been disproven, nor can it be. It is just that
the evidence in favor is … underwhelming, and I invoke Occam's
razor.
Now that only explains why
I am an atheist as opposed to an agnostic or skeptic – it does not
serve to functionally distinguish between an atheist and an agnostic.
I asked myself what it is that makes me an atheist. An agnostic or
skeptic is open to the possibility of admitting the existence of
WIITINOT, and hence one can (and should)
ask of an agnostic what it would take for her or him to admit the
existence of WIITINOT.
I am
only agnostic implies that there exists some hypothetical event which
would leave me no choice but to admit the existence of WIITINOT.
In my
case, however, there is absolutely no imaginable event or series of
events that would force me to accept or even suggest to me the
existence of WIITINOT. This is not to say that there are no phenomena
that I can't explain, nor that if something mysterious were to take
place in front of my eyes I would be able to explain it. I would be
happy to admit my personal ignorance, but before attributing the
event to some WIITINOT, I would be assured that some human either
already can explain it naturalistically, or that in the future
humanity would eventually be able to explain it naturalistically.
After all, none of us understands derivatives (the financial
instruments, not the calculus kind), but we don't usually invoke them
as evidence in favor of the existence of WIITINOT.
400
years ago no human being understood the rainbow, and it was an
ineluctable mystery attributed to WIITINOT. Now, the immense majority
of even us educated humans still can not explain the rainbow (nor
even describe it fully), but it is no longer a mystery that
necessitates the existence of WIITINOT, we all
know that there is some human being, likely a physcist, who can
explain it fully.
I
repeat, there is absolutely no imaginable event or series of events
that would force me to accept or even suggest to me the existence of
WIITINOT. By modus tonens,
I am not only agnostic, I am a full-blown, unremediable closed-minded
atheist.
That
doesn't prevent me from being friends with NAIFs –
NonAtheistIntelligentFaithers. (My friend dissuaded me from referring
to nonAtheists as “credules”.) Witness my friendship with Cosmic,
who is a christian. On the morning after the day I met him in Las
Vegas, in his pickup truck on the way to climb, I noticed a handsewn
dashboard cover, a wooden cross mirror ornament etc. I asked
him and he explained, that he was a christian (Christian?), that
Jesus had walked this earth, that he died on the cross for us and
that his love for us … that Cosmic felt Jesus' love for him, as he
felt Jesus' love for everybody and that he hoped I wouldn't mind his
talking to me about Jesus, because he would. I told him I was an
atheist and I didn't mind at all, I would love to hear what he had to
say as long as I could ask questions and discuss things, but that
there was nothing he could say that would convert me and that I was
not looking to convince him either. Cosmic said very slowly that was
fine, he just felt compelled to talk because he felt Jesus' love.
So later that day when I slipped on a
hard move, 15' off the deck, and nearly fell, and managed to make the
two or three moves up to the large hold, and looked down at Cosmic
with relief and pride and then exclaimed upwards, Thank You Jesus!,
Cosmic understood me, you'll be a Believer yet.
And when he called me this week to tell
me that his prayers would be with me, I understood him, and was able
to honestly tell him that my prayers would be with him during his
shoulder surgery.
I have two take-aways: One, agnostics
and skeptics should be challenged to state the conditions under which
they would admit the existence of a WIITINOT. Two, if you are
inflexible, decided, obdurate etc., you should declare yourself as
such before entering a
discussion.
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