Perhaps I've been living in a bubble for the past 7-8 years, but I had come to believe that Atheism had become completely passé with the dawning of Post-modern subjectivism along with its evaporation of intolerant, absolutist statements. Perhaps Atheism has waned over the past decade. Indeed, in all my internet discussion, it is not atheism that I've found myself in dialogue with but rather agnosticism. However, thanks to my friend Pheirser for bringing this to my attention, it appears that Atheism may again be on the rise in secular thought with much help from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Not just atheism, but a sort of atheist fundamentalism with the kind of heated rhetoric (and sometimes the kind of logic) that you might see from the religious fundamentalists they so harshly criticize. I've been thinking about reading Dawkin's popular book, The God Delusion, and offering my criticisms of it, but that is something I think would be fun to do with a small group of people.
My own worldview has been shaped with much thanks to a brief discussion (even though I'm sure I misunderstood him) with a college Philosophy professor who helped me to see the epistemological (i.e. our ability to know things) limitations of human beings. He really only hinted at this, never speaking in great detail on it, but the reality of it has sort of haunted me ever since. What can we really know for sure, without a shadow of a doubt? We have great limitations on what we can know for sure, simply because we are not God, we are not omniscient.
On "Truth," "Belief," and "Certitude"
First off, to define my terms:
Truth—what is, objectively, the content and order of Reality.
Belief—the body of knowledge concerning Reality a person considers to be True.
Certitude—one's notion that, without a shadow of a doubt, his belief is 100% true, leaving absolutely no room for the slightest possibility that he is wrong.
In college, before I talked to my professor, I thought that Certitude was inherent to Belief in Christianity—that one could not have Belief without Certitude. Now, I think differently. Now I think that Certitude about almost anything is actually impossible for humans simply because humans are not infinite in their knowledge of reality. [1] Therefore, when approaching almost any subject matter, humans should practice epistemological humility, realizing that they could be wrong. Let me give an example.
[WARNING: LIFE OF DAVID GALE SPOILER!] Think of the movie The Life of David Gale. The jury was pressed to make a decision, and because of the partial video they saw in addition to other evidence, they were convinced that the evidence convicted Gale of murder. However, the full video reveals the fact that Gale did not murder his colleague at all, but it was, in fact, a suicide. Likewise, we need to make a decision in life as to what we believe about the Gospel of Christ. The evidence and experience can be overwhelming that the Gospel is true (and it is, I think, overwhelming), and on that evidence we make a decision to follow Him -- we put our faith into practice. However, I will not know until I die whether what I believe is indeed true or not. By saying that I cannot accept the Gospel of Christ with Certitude, I am simply acknowledging the fact that I don't know everything. If I don't know everything, then it is possible in that shaded area of my ignorance there could be some Truth (i.e., "What actually is" not "what appears to be") I am missing that -- like that final piece of evidence in Gale -- tells a different story than what appears to be the case as I see it now.
As far as I see it, the only true rational or scientific verification of whether or not the Gospel is true will happen at the Second coming of Christ. The Gospel says -- among other things -- that at this time, there will be life after death for those who believe. Using the scientific method of verification is impossible here. We cannot conduct an experiment that proves there is eternal life for those who believe. We cannot cause the Second Coming to happen, and then record the results. Real and final verification is impossible. However, there is plenty of evidence that suggests the Gospel is true, and on this evidence we believe that it is true, and live our lives in faith that it is true.
The Faith of Atheism
However, this is a sore rub for atheists. Atheists seem to like to think that they have a philosophical worldview that is completely absent of Faith. My atheist friend told me that any belief that is based on Faith is "irresponsible." The problem for the atheist is that Faith is inherent to their worldview as well, whether they realize it or not. Now I need to define a couple more terms in this context:
Faith—a Belief (see above) that is based on an experientially unverifiable presupposition [2]
Presupposition—something that is an assumed and necessary foundation for a philosophical argument.
As far as I can tell, Atheists exercise Faith in these (if not also other) presuppositions:
1) That their physical senses are not deceiving them, that their experiences are an actual (and not fictional) reality.
2) That the scientific method is the best way of discerning Truth
3) That there is no reality beyond our spatio-temporal existence
Presupposition 1 is a presupposition that both Christians and Atheists share. The movie The Matrix is an excellent example of this. If it is true that all of our experiences are essentially electronic impulses in our brain that could be reproduced through other means, this very response that you're reading could be a fictitious fabrication of artificial intelligence. Of course, there is no real reason to believe that the Matrix exists, but there is also no way (that I'm aware of) to prove that the ideas of the matrix are false. Therefore, all science is based on the "faith" or "presupposition" that we are not in something like a matrix and that scientific experiments are not fictitious images produced by contrived electronic impulses. Therefore, if it is "irresponsible" to believe anything based on faith, then we are all in trouble. [3]
Regarding Presupposition 2, How do you verify that the scientific method is the best way of discerning Truth? A gut feeling? Do you use scientific method to prove that scientific method is True? You see, it becomes a circular argument because their foundation of scientific method is itself an unverifiable presupposition that requires Faith.
Presupposition 3 is especially unique to atheists. Christians have the opposite presupposition, that Reality does extend beyond our spatio-temporal existence. Now, by "spatio-temporal" what I mean the experience we have of space-time. For example, we experience three space dimensions (i.e., up-down, left-right, forward-back), and one time dimension (i.e., time only moves forward). But Christianity (and other religions) claim that there is more to reality than meets the eye, that there are aspects of Reality that extend beyond our tangible grasp. Now the problem this presents for Atheists is the fact that scientific method is entirely based upon empirical data. If there is Reality that extends beyond our spatio-temporal existence, it is, by definition, impossible to empirically test and thus beyond scientific method. Thus Atheists have to presuppose by Faith that there is no Reality beyond the spatio-temporal, because there is no way through scientific method to prove that it does or doesn't exist.
That is all for now. I'll try to write more on this later. Please, I welcome any comments, critiques, or suggestions!
__________________________
Footnotes:
[1] I say this in keeping with my lack of absolute certain. That is, even in this statement "humans can say almost nothing with absolute certitude," I realize that I could be mistaken, and I welcome any insights on how I could be wrong in this regard.
[2] This is a very contextually-confined definition of Faith. In other contexts, I will use the word "Faith" in a very different sense.
[3] This is, as I understand it, the epistemological reality that Descartes was dealing with in his Meditations and Discourse on Method. I just started reading his Meditations, so please forgive me if I'm mistaken on this, but as I understand it, Descartes concluded that the only thing that you cannot doubt, that you can know with absolute certainty, is that you exist. The only thing that Descartes could be certain of was that he was, indeed, doubting. "If I am doubting, there must be an 'I' to exist."
No comments:
Post a Comment