Our Romanian correspondent, ZOMGitsCriss, has posted a timely review of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, a collection of short stories, articles and festive tips from a suspiciously meaningful number* of atheists, edited by Ariane Sherine (creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign). Of course, I have something of a soft spot for this video, because our lovely host says some words. Nice words. Nice words about me. Have you bought your copy yet?
* Forty-two, innit!
Isn’t it amazing what League of Reason bloggers get up to? Sure, some of us lead very mundane lives, doing absolutely nothing but drinking coffee and and tweeting about it. But others spend their days trying to make good use of speaker’s corner. And every so often (though arguably not often enough), one of our number produces cartoons with a very low frame-rate, that is more than made up for by the punchy writing and suspiciously brilliant voice acting.
Every week there’s some exciting new scandal involving a Leaguer, and I can’t tell you how proud this makes me. After all, scandal makes the world go round*. Perhaps then, you can imagine the smile on my face when our very own Godless-Romanian-Vampire-Gypsy-Witch captured the attention of not only atheist overlord PZ Myers, but also the Huffington Post. There’s no need for me to explain this story, when you can just watch the video after the break. Then read on…
Hey there .
It’s very late and I’m tired but I said I will have a blog by Sunday and if I don’t deliver I will OCD my brains out over it. I’m awesome like that. So please excuse my possible ramble.
In this blog I will mainly adress the Theists. I heard many of them saying that they KNOW certain things in regards to God and what they say to be “the Creation’ . Even in the recent debate between Thunderf00t and Ray Comfort, Ray said a couple of times that (unlike Thunderf00t) he KNOWS what the truth is.
I will try to argue why this claim cannot possibly hold water.
First of all, what does “to know’ mean anyway? Can we say that we know anything at all ? I would say we can. For instance, I KNOW that there are more than two people writing on this site. I know this because I can count, I can read, I personally know more than two of them, etc. The point is, I can say I KNOW this because it is in my immediate and direct observation.
I can also say I know that Human and Chimpanzee DNA is about 98.5 percent identical. This is clearly not in my immediate and direct observation but I can still say I KNOW it because I have sufficient data proving it. All facts gathered through observation and experiment point to this conclusion, none of them point against it.
But let’s try another example. Not to long ago, if anyone asked me to define a triangle without mentioning its angles, I would have said that any given 3 points that are not in a straight line form a triangle . And I thought I KNOW that the sum of the interior angles of any triangle is 180 degrees. But I was wrong. This is true if the given triangle is in Euclidian space. But if someone could draw a triangle in the near neighbourhood of a Black Hole with such intense gravity forces, the interior angles of that triangle would NOT add up to 180 degrees. The results are very different depending on how Space bends. So suddenly, even if I was certain I KNOW something, at some point I realized that my so called knowledge was in fact a belief. And I was wrong in my belief because I was ignorant of the data.
I still have certain beliefs. For instance, I believe that Quantum Mechanic could be eventually proven not to contradict Determinism. I don’t believe that the atoms act randomly but rather that at atomic level there might be laws we haven’t discovered yet and variables we cannot calculate. Which, imho, is not to say that the atoms are not subjected to the cause and effect rules. And I believe that (strongly I may say) because EVERYTHING in the observable Universe is subjected to the cause and effect rule. But I am willing to admit that I don’t KNOW that and there is a possibility I might be wrong. And if, at some point, all evidence will lead to the conclusion that atoms can act randomly, I will change my belief. I highly doubt this will happen, what I am trying to say is that I don’t rule out this option because I realize this is something I believe and NOT something I know.
How about God ? When you say you KNOW God is real and He created everything, what do you base it on? On a book with origins and authors very dubious (to say the least). God is not in your immediate and direct observation and there is no collected data to support his existence. He cannot be proven through observation and experiment. So you are left with your book. And how do you know that your book is the Truth ? Because it says so in your book. Can you spot the problem with this ? (hint : it starts with a “c’ and it ends with “ircular’)
And you may say now that according to this logic, Atheists cannot say they KNOW there is no God. Which is correct and I don’t know one single Atheist who says so. An Atheist will say he does not BELIVE in a God. The difference between the logic of an Atheist and the logic Theist is that the first doesn’t believe because of lack of evidence while the former believes DESPITE the lack of evidence.
Where I am going with this is that you cannot say that you KNOW your God is real. You only BELIEVE he is real. And if you accept that what you call knowledge is in fact a belief, you will also have to accept the possibility that you might be wrong.
I’m just sayin’
Criss