| In this post: What are atheists? What are theists? Why do they argue so loudly? |
If you believe that the Universe is alone, with nothing outside of it, and that the Big Bang just happened, perhaps converting a singularity into a Universe without cause, without purpose and without direction, and that everything that has happened since, including the evolution of you and me, is simply the laws of chance at work over a very long period of time, within some sort of self-ordering principle, itself just an accident, then you are an atheist.
If you believe that there is something (or someone) outside of our Universe that had any kind of role, intentional or unintentional, in its birth, or that there is any force or intelligence, currently living, dead or lifeless that has at any time exercised any discretion in the creation of life or its evolution, or that the Singularity itself couldn’t have existed without some agency having created it and then big-banged it into a Universe, then you are a theist.
You are very foolish if you think that it is possible to prove scientifically that there is a god. You are even more foolish if you think it is possible to prove scientifically that there is not one. Judging from the literature, there are lots of fools around.
What is clear is that we could debate through eternity, establishing very credible arguments one way and the other, and we can even have wars over the issue of whether and which god exists. Meanwhile, the fact that a god exists — or doesn’t — is unaffected by what we say or do.
Given that, why can’t people who believe and people who don’t believe just leave each other alone and shut up about it?
Why is it that so many of the most prominent champions of atheism are somehow impelled to taunt the other side and to paint them as being antiquated, superstitious, totally unsophisticated, and, by the way, responsible for every war in the history of humankind?
Why do many ardent theists feel that it is obvious that, besides being spiritually impoverished and heretical, atheists are also guilty of bad science, leading people astray and, perhaps, torturing cats?
Of course, not everybody is yelling across the fence at each other; for the most part it’s only some fundamentalist theists and some fundamentalist atheists. We mostly know about the fundamentalist theists. They are the ones that believe in the absolute truth of their scriptures and the absolute authority of their God’s edicts. Fundamentalist atheists are something else again. They share a set of their own absolute “truths” that I’ll examine in a future post.
Is it even worth the effort to think about this? Given that nothing can be proven about the existence of a god, then, why is it that so many thinkers who aren’t merely fools (philosophers, scientists and religious leaders among others) write so many books on the subject of a god’s existence and declare themselves to be theists, deists, atheists, believers, doubters, agnostics and dozens of other categories, and why do so many people pray to, curse, and even talk to their God? Apparently, thinking about who or what created us is almost as natural as thinking about food when we’re hungry. For whatever reason, the issue of whether there is a god and the nature of that god is powerfully important to us — at a personal level — far more so than the issue of provability.
In fact, it is quite likely that the great majority of people who call themselves atheists are not so, and that the majority of people who are called fundamentalists are not so. The problem is that the framework we, as a society, are working with, does not provide sufficient options to choose from. Theism-or-atheism is much too rigid a structure to allow people to identify with accuracy even their own theological positions, much less those of others. Is there a way to expand the framework?I think so. I’m sure of it.
If you believe that there is something (or someone) outside of our Universe that had any kind of role, intentional or unintentional, in its birth, or that there is any force or intelligence, currently living, dead or lifeless that has at any time exercised any discretion in the creation of life or its evolution, or that the Singularity itself couldn’t have existed without some agency having created it and then big-banged it into a Universe, then you are a theist.
You are very foolish if you think that it is possible to prove scientifically that there is a god. You are even more foolish if you think it is possible to prove scientifically that there is not one. Judging from the literature, there are lots of fools around.
What is clear is that we could debate through eternity, establishing very credible arguments one way and the other, and we can even have wars over the issue of whether and which god exists. Meanwhile, the fact that a god exists — or doesn’t — is unaffected by what we say or do.
Given that, why can’t people who believe and people who don’t believe just leave each other alone and shut up about it?
Why is it that so many of the most prominent champions of atheism are somehow impelled to taunt the other side and to paint them as being antiquated, superstitious, totally unsophisticated, and, by the way, responsible for every war in the history of humankind?
Why do many ardent theists feel that it is obvious that, besides being spiritually impoverished and heretical, atheists are also guilty of bad science, leading people astray and, perhaps, torturing cats?
Of course, not everybody is yelling across the fence at each other; for the most part it’s only some fundamentalist theists and some fundamentalist atheists. We mostly know about the fundamentalist theists. They are the ones that believe in the absolute truth of their scriptures and the absolute authority of their God’s edicts. Fundamentalist atheists are something else again. They share a set of their own absolute “truths” that I’ll examine in a future post.
Is it even worth the effort to think about this? Given that nothing can be proven about the existence of a god, then, why is it that so many thinkers who aren’t merely fools (philosophers, scientists and religious leaders among others) write so many books on the subject of a god’s existence and declare themselves to be theists, deists, atheists, believers, doubters, agnostics and dozens of other categories, and why do so many people pray to, curse, and even talk to their God? Apparently, thinking about who or what created us is almost as natural as thinking about food when we’re hungry. For whatever reason, the issue of whether there is a god and the nature of that god is powerfully important to us — at a personal level — far more so than the issue of provability.
In fact, it is quite likely that the great majority of people who call themselves atheists are not so, and that the majority of people who are called fundamentalists are not so. The problem is that the framework we, as a society, are working with, does not provide sufficient options to choose from. Theism-or-atheism is much too rigid a structure to allow people to identify with accuracy even their own theological positions, much less those of others. Is there a way to expand the framework?
