The Tolerant Atheist

I am an atheist; but atheism, like any other belief pertaining to deities, is based on faith — ‎ in this case, the belief that there is no God. Neither the existence nor the nonexistence of God is provable. We each believe what we believe because it explains the world to us better than any other set of beliefs.

Both atheists and theists try to argue their case on the basis of how the universe came into being. For a theist, there has to be a Creator — the notion of a world that came into existence of its own accord is simply inconceivable. For an atheist, on the other hand, the existence of a Creator seems to imply an impossible infinite regress; who or what created the Creator, and how was the Creator’s Creator created? Physicists now generally agree on the Big Bang theory, which proposes that the universe arose from a single super-dense concentration of energy that then expanded, but the Big Bang theory is consistent both with the existence of a Creator and the non-existence of a Creator.

In fact, the human mind is incapable of visualizing any origin of the universe at all. The first verse of the Bible states that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. Yet we cannot conceive of a time that has no previous time, which is what the “beginning” must be. The Big Bang has the same problem: what came before it? How can the creation of time be part of the Big Bang, as cosmologists assume, if the very notion of creation implies a time prior to the creation?

“Inconceivable” and “impossible” are not the same thing. Our minds are limited; there are things we cannot conceive that are nonetheless possible. It has to be that way because nothing else can explain the paradox of a time when there was no time. We (cosmologists, anyway) can analyze these inconceivable things using the tools of mathematics, but being able to analyze them does not imply being able to form mental images of them.

Atheism has gotten a lot of attention thanks in large part to three books: “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris, and “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens. So far I’ve read only Dawkins’s book. Dawkins isn’t just an atheist; he’s an aggressive atheist who regards theistic beliefs as ridiculous. Yet he alludes to the fact that some of his best friends are members of the godly community.

We atheists must face the fact that there are many theists, and even believers in “intelligent design”, who are neither stupid nor crazy. (The theists owe the atheists the same respect, of course.) So how can intelligent, sane people reach such different conclusions about God? The answer, of course, is that they have faith in different worldviews, and such faith is capable neither of proof nor refutation.

I firmly believe that there is no god, or at least no god who makes any difference (more about that later). I could argue that science backs me up in that belief, and the cosmology of the Big Bang seems almost irrefutable. Yet I haven’t examined that cosmology down to its finest details, and few others except for professionals have or are even able to. I base my understanding of it on what I am told by physicists and astronomers, whom I find more believable than soothsayers and preachers of the Gospel. I believe the results of the physicists’ experiments, but I cannot verify them for myself. The believers in salvation through faith in Jesus Christ have one advantage over atheists: they get their knowledge firsthand, through personal revelation. But we atheists have an advantage of our own: we’re better at predicting the future, and that ability makes modern technology possible.

Believers in science make much of the fact that their beliefs are based on actual observation. But observation is a less reliable guide to truth than it first appears. According to the New Testament, Jesus was a guest at a wedding where the wine ran out. He had six pots of water brought to him and turned the water into wine. A miracle, no?

Now imagine the same scenario of six pots of water being turned into six pots of wine, but change the context: a professional magician performs the same “miracle” for a theater audience. Neither the magician nor the audience thinks that God or Jesus has anything to do with it, even though the audience cannot explain how it happened. A miracle in one context is a clever magic trick in another.

Science does have an advantage in this matter: experiments are repeatable but miracles are not. Following the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus healed a leper, but he didn’t heal another leper every week. If he had, that would have been a better demonstration of his miraculous powers — or a demonstration of what a skillful magician he was. Science experiments do have a special claim to truth: they are repeatable by others using methods that are openly described.

Most of the American Founding Fathers — Jefferson, Madison, and those thinkers — were deists, who believed in God (usually referred to as the Almighty) but regarded him as the Divine Watchmaker who set the world in motion but then left it to run by itself. They were quite down on atheists, a view that I’ve never been able to understand. To me, the existence or non-existence of God is ultimately an unimportant, uninteresting, and unanswerable question. The interesting question is how one’s understanding of God (or non-god) affects the way one leads one’s life. What does one do differently if the Divine Watchmaker exists, versus what one does if there’s no god at all? Those who believe in personal salvation through Jesus Christ certainly lead their lives differently than atheists and deists; they devote considerable energy to Jesus-related activities while atheists and deists devote none at all. Interestingly, the Founding Fathers hardly ever mentioned Jesus in their writings even though they often referred to the Almighty.

Many scientists, of course, are religious. But science is not consistent with the miraculous or even with a God who answers prayers. Repeatable experiments would not be possible if God might rejigger the results. I often wonder how those religious scientists resolve that conflict of principles.

Imperfect as my knowledge of these matters may be, I still act on the basis of it because my intuition tells me that I’m right. Since certainty is not possible, I really have no other choice.