« The Top 25 | Main | Technical Difficulties »

August 02, 2003

Tilting at Windmills

The Raving Atheist, celebrating his first blogoversary, has cited me for name calling (naturally, he misspelled my name. Sigh.) as one of the high (low?) points of his first year for my designation of his proof that God doesn’t exist as a ‘foolish argument.’ While I suppose I could have been more charitable in my assessment, it’s difficult for me to do so when it comes to a simple question of logic. It is impossible to prove a negative. Just because you’ve never seen a ghost or the Easter Bunny, you cannot prove that they don’t exist. In that same vein, simply because believers cannot provide empirical data proving the existence of God, it doesn’t follow that God doesn’t exist. It is possible that God has simply eliminated any proof of his existence because He wants his followers to worship based on faith rather than on evidence. This does not prove that God does exist by any means. Certainly you can make a good case against the existence of God through a careful review of the evidence, but that isn’t the same as proof. This is not unusual; most of the decisions we make in life are based on incomplete information, and are not proofs, but working theories. (This article, although its conclusion is inaccurate, is a good discussion of how we arrive at our beliefs.)

What I really cannot understand is why anyone would care so much about proof. If you’re an atheist, why do you care if others believe in a God? If you’re a person of deep faith, why does it offend you so much that others don’t share your faith? In this, zealots are two sides of the same coin. It’s not enough for them to come to a conclusion that is right for them; they want everyone else to agree with their conclusion. This is a major problem when they choose to blow up truck bombs and fly jet aircraft into buildings in an attempt to force their beliefs on others. This is rare in the West, and I’m certainly not suggesting this is what Raving Atheist and his allies are seeking. But even when it comes to simple discussion, such dogmatism is damaging.

The Raving Atheist has stated that he doesn’t respect religious people, because he considers anyone who believes in a God to be deficient in intellect. In other words, as soon as a blogger says she believes in God, RA summarily throws all of her arguments onto the trash heap. I should hope I don’t need to spend too much time explaining why this is a poor method of doing business. I’ll switch gears to another topic to illustrate.

I disagree with Rook’s Rant on a fairly large number of topics. In particular, I think his alarmism regarding the Bush administration is significantly overblown given the facts. However, I still visit his site regularly, and I try to assess each of his arguments based on the merits, rather than immediately dismissing them because I disagree with his on an unrelated (or tangentially related) point. To dismiss a source based on a single source of disagreement may make one’s life easier, because you can probably quickly eliminate all opposing views to your own. After all, there probably aren’t two people on the planet who agree on every issue. But this is the path that many universities seem to be taking, and what has such an approach done to their intellectual vigor?

Most people prefer to talk with like-minded people. It’s much more fun to get together with friends and all pile on a particular topic than to seek out people who see things differently and try to convince them that you’re right. Certainly my own blogroll is evidence of this; you won’t find many sites on it that represent the left side of the blogosphere. (Although this is partially attributed to my blogroll policy, which is almost 100% reciprocal.) But when everyone agrees on a topic, their arguments tend to stagnate. If you don’t have to convince, after all, you don’t have to think overly hard about the issue. If, on the other hand, you grant your opposition the courtesy of assuming they have some reasons for thinking as they do, you have to work much harder to refute their arguments. It’s a tough challenge, and one few of us are willing to undertake. And I certainly don’t exclude myself from that critique.

But RA and those like him seem to be handicapping the race in their favor to such an extent there isn’t even a point to discussing it. They’re so certain they’re right, they don’t even want to talk to anyone who possesses an opposing point of view. I fail to see the point of that. If they truly desire to convince others of the rightness of their arguments, assuming their opponents are stupid is a really poor method. They’re free to use it, but I’m willing to bet they won’t gain many new adherents to their cause. So if they really are trying to convince rather than berate, they’re going to need to find a better method. And, to be fair, so will I.

So, from here on out, at least once a week I’m going to try and challenge myself. I’ll find an blog article I disagree with and try to come up with a cogent counterargument. Not a ‘Fisking,’ nor a series of ad hominem attacks, but a real counterargument that concedes the validity of the other side. At a bare minimum, it will force me to put a little more thought into my arguments, and perhaps I can occasionally even get a dialogue going. Perhaps my initial ideas won’t be those that we arrive at in the end, but that’s really the point. With a little more work, maybe we can come up with a more accurate answer, rather than simply defending our own little intellectual gardens.