Atheism is a negation. It shouldn't be necessary to define one's position as an atheist. As many new atheist writers have written we do not need a special name for those of us who do not believe in fairies. However frequently when I tell an atheist that atheism is a void, that it is negative space, they take it as an insult. I believe that it is because many atheists have fought hard for their non-belief.
I shouldn't be surprised when an atheist bristles at the idea above. They may have lost friends during their deconversion. They may have lost family. They may even still be mourning the faith they left behind. Many of the most energetic atheists were in fact rabid believers. They were people who suffered and struggled to face the 'cold austere beauty of the universe.' They were naked and screaming and defiant after leaving the womb of the church. Naked and frequently alone they look for fellowship in this country so hostile to their kind. In this state if they hear me seem to mock their pain they get angry, and they should.
Atheism is an absence, but it is a useful and a productive one. And this is what my statement above fails to encompass and explain.
Picture yourself as a hypothetical believer in a metaphorical cathedral. The cathedral represents your worldview up until this moment. All around you are soaring walls decorated with intricate works of stained glass. Because one can always take refuge in God's grace it is hushed in the house of God. The silence itself magnifies the words, phrases and whole anecdotes that leap into your mind as your eyes run across symbols of the faith; the cross, the alter and myriad statues. Your eyes begin to interpret the brightly painted glass of a window. It shows a story from your bible classes. But as you lean forward to examine the swirls of color in one large plate you see things moving behind the glass. At first you ignore the phantom movement of objects obscured by the glass but eventually it can not be ignored. For a moment shock holds you in place. A horrible sinking feeling fills you. There are thing outside the Church. There is a world outside that is neither encompassed nor explained by the Church walls. But to explore that world you will have to leave the house of God.
The angry atheists are the ones who had to kick out a beautiful, beloved and meaningful stained glass window in order to see reality. They are angry that they were fooled for so long, and they feel betrayed by those they admired and trusted. In a sense they were forced to exchange a something for a nothing. They lost a cosmology and gained an empty space that was useful for looking out at the world as it is. A sublime and comforting crystal tapestry had blocked their view of the universe and they tore it down. The beautiful cathedral window was a work of comforting fiction. The newly free are proud and defiant and they love their useful emptiness.
As an agnostic I feel there is one more comforting fiction to relinquish and that is the illusion of certainty. The believer opens his mind and becomes an atheist who then loosens his fist and becomes an agnostic. I don't mean to be insulting. I don't think agnosticism is the more 'reasonable' point of view if by reasonable you mean a compromise between faith and science. When I say more reasonable that is exactly what I mean; more in line with reason. Agnosticism is a state of doubt about all truth claims. I believe that its usefulness lies in its admonishment to keep ones mind always open to better explanations. It is the doorstop that keeps ones mind from slamming shut as it is wont to do.
However in the end even agnosticism’s gifts are paltry when compared to the imaginary splendor of a belief system. While the stories of a religion may be false, the comfort of community is very real. In the end we must look beyond negation and even an open mind if we want to be happy social animals. What we need is community. We need free thinking companions or at least believers who cherrish and respect us, doubt and all.
As it has been said, it is best to begin at the beginning, proceed through the middle and stop at the end. So where did my own skepticism begin, how has it been nurtured and where to I stand today? Let me explain.
I was raised by a woman who just happened to be my mother. It didn't have to be that way. Tarzan after all was not. But I digress and a digression this soon in a post is not a good sign. Let me start again, and more skeptically. I was raised by a woman who I do believe to be my mother. She was a non practicing christian. I would like to think she was non practicing because she perfected her christianity when she was a girl, but since she is currently a supporter of the death penalty, a rather uncharitable point of view, I don't think that is the case. My mother however was intelligent and humorous and a above all irreverent. It is in that irreverence that I believe my skepticism was born.
In the historical mystery by Umberto Eco titled 'The name of the rose' the plot centers around a killer monk that fears the subversive power of laughter. In my case I do believe that my ability to laugh at the truly ridiculous despite societies expectation that I worship it saved me from a life filled with superstition. While my propensity for critical thinking is important and I'm sure that came from my mother as well, my sense of humor is what allows me to truly enjoy the strange and wonderful world of adult make believe, without becoming enthralled by it. All the worlds a stage, and much of it shows stand up and slapstick comedy.
And so I was trained at an early age to be amused by improbable things; In other words, to give religion it's due. But while humor protected me from the need to fool myself it did not answer any questions. All the questions a child generally has, I had. Luckily I had a mother that didn't mind saying 'I don't know.' And she knew where the library was. I was raised in an environment that encouraged both inquiry and the acquisition of knowledge. At 5 I knew many more specifics about individual dinosaurs than I do now, and rather than thinking me a geek or an egghead my mother was proud. I was rewarded for knowing things.
So, with a love of humor, the absurd and knowledge I was armed and ready. That was how I became a skeptic. I was raised to be one. But what sustained me? In the beginning there was no great effort involved in maintaining my skepticism. The framework of knowledge I had started to build as a child was enough, although I would be a sad sad little man if my understanding hadn't been refined over time. 'When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.' It is fun to quote religious writings especially when one can redirect their original meaning, but I have a serious point.
When I was young, I thought science was RIGHT; Yes, right in capitals. I thought it was a replacement for religion. It was Hamlet, the wronged hero come to vanquish the wicked usurper from the stage with a a blade as keen as Occam's. It had all the answers. That it was right seemed obvious; self evident. Science produced results. That was the bottom line. At that time I thought science gave final answers. I thought the universe didn't play dice; that an object could only be in one place at a time. I thought nothing moved faster than light. Obviously there comes a time when you learn that none of these things are completely true. Eventually faithful science balks and rears. The steed becomes the sphinx, but instead of devouring one for incorrect answers it simply continues to riddle. The universe transforms itself from a place that can ultimately be understood, to one that offers mysteries that are seemingly impossible to intuit.
Feynman said:
'I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.'
Even if he was wrong, there seem to be precious few of us to give him
the lie. In short, the universe is weird, fundamentally,
irreconcilably weird. We can calculate it, but we aren't
evolutionarily wired to get the behavior of it's current basic
building blocks on a gut level. I see no evidence that convinces me
that the universe isn't 'Turtles, all the way down.' Hell, universes
themselves might evolve. We have to face our limitations.
There I was. Not only was the world around me made up of objects
that were mostly empty space and ghostly forces, but on a fundamental
level the universe only offered approximations and probabilities. On
top of that I learned that I had been betrayed by words themselves. I
found that I had to come to detente with the parts of post modernism
that made sense to me. Scientific communication takes place using
words and language. Words and language offer their own traps and
inadequacies and not only for the unwary, but for everyone. Communication has a cultural context that takes part in
both defining and interpreting scientific concepts. To top off all
this, I found out that there is no such thing as the scientific
method. There is no one set of rules to go by that can be defined as
the scientific cannon for all disciplines. So what did I do?
For years, I did nothing or at least I didn't do what was required.
But eventually I faced my fear. I dug into philosophy in an attempt
to understand what had lead up to this mess. I felt that all of human
history was involved in conspiring to make my head a maze and muddle.
Because I'm a slow reader I would have found it too challenging to
read every philosopher in depth, so instead I read books about
philosophy in general. I read surveys of philosophy. I wanted a
general outline of the evolution of critical thought. Where had we
come from and where are we going? In the end I was led to a question.
THE fundamental question: How do we know? Then it all made sense. Science for me is about that
question and that question alone. Science is in effect the answer to
that question. It isn't the answer to 'What do we know.' It is the
answer to How.
So my focus changed and individual elements of knowledge faded in
significance while the over all framework that I use to evaluate those
facts became primary. It isn't an answer that will ever be complete or
perfect, but it is an answer that I'm happy with. Now I know that if I
work on my How, my What will best representation I'm likely to get of
the IS. The best we can do will have to be good enough. Because good enough is the best we can do.