Hello again, my lovelies, ready for more thoughtful chaos? The following essay I've been working on here and there for a bit. I was finally inspired to put pen to paper after reading "the god delusion" by richard dawkins, hoping that it might finally convert me to complete atheism. sadly, i was disappointed by the holes in the argument, and left tragically unconvinced. further, i am moved by the uncalled-for name-calling that we open-minded agnostics are constantly subjected to by those who believe in something (or "nah-ssing," think about it). hopefully, this will help to explain things a little better to these bullies...
A Defense of Agnosticism
In the Universe, there is no Law. You may ask yourself, what sort of crazed individual could make such a claim for the realm of the Big Everything. Indeed, anarchy is the dream of renegade teenagers and such cynicism reverberates from the hollow tunnel of the “Lost Generation.” And yet, I assure you, I am far from these and well do I recognize the transparent foibles of each. I am instead that endless nagging question, the bane of all reasonable thinking persons, the Bat in the Battle of Bird and Beast: the Agnostic. That perennial fence-sitter is I, disdained by all who have made up their minds. “Make a decision,” they clamour, ire growing visibly as each minute painfully waffles by. Fine then, I shall repeat myself: “THERE IS NO LAW!!!” How’s that for a declaration?
My argument is not a result of some mystical, transcendental experience, but rather the product of simple reasoning reinforced by a layperson’s (read “idiot's”) familiarity with the basic tenets of modern science. That is to say that I have simply fleshed out my ideas and hypotheses with some rudimentary observations as all good reasoning should be.
Firstly, the agnostic position, or rather, as I would not feign to speak for agnostics united, MY agnostic position: the only certainty is uncertainty. “ Aha, you see?” the (non)believers instantly point out, “he has contradicted himself from the very beginning.” Yes, indeed I have bound myself into this strange loop, and it is not unaware. It is deliberately and precisely to demonstrate the argument that I have pitched camp at the base of this particular hill.
Of course, to those acquainted with the state of modern quantum physics, strangeness is nothing to shirk from. To approximate the late great Richard Feynman: “if you don't find quantum physics strange, then you haven't really understood it...” And such seeming paradoxes proliferate.
So, lets start with the basic requirements for establishing a Law, an unalterable rule about the Universe. It must be that such a statement can never be violated. This means that if even one contradictory example can be given, then said Law must be abandoned as “untrue.” For example, in this world, such Newtonian “Laws” as “what goes up, must come down” lose all meaning when viewed through the cosmic lens of relativity, because a thing may be only tenuously bound by the so-very-weak force of gravity as to escape its pull and move forever upwards (relatively-speaking of course) and never return to the plane of its initial ascent. The point of this is to establish that such rules work well for our local observation, but break down tragically on different scales. And so, we would do well to start thinking of these "laws" more as rules-of-thumb than inviolable mandates.
This thinking is not necessarily relegated to the realm of physics, and there are those who may seek a “purer” demonstration. For those, I refer to a saying that physicists defer to mathematicians, whereas mathematicians defer only to God. The idea here is obviously not to push a deistic agenda but rather to point out the “impartiality” of mathematics and to illustrate the study of numbers as a generally agreed upon consistent and coherent means of deciding “true” statements. To this end, I will direct the reader to the work of Kurt Gödel. Gödel is famous for his systematic approach to a previous work (whose title and author we shall turn to later) and his subsequent “incompleteness theorem”. Without going too far into the details, Gödel was essentially able to prove an inherent shortcoming of all formal systems (of which mathematics is one). The idea traces its lineage to an old Greek question, the “Epimenides Paradox,” which states simply: “I am a liar”. This superficially simple sentence is actually very complicated and it creates what may be called a “strange loop” in that it contradicts itself regardless of how one interprets it. If one accepts the statement as true, and the speaker as being truthful in his admission, then he is telling the truth and cannot be a liar and vice-versa. One can see the basic contradiction. But despite its actual impossibility, the statement can clearly be articulated in language, and even transfers information. While this may seem to be merely a semantic quibble, its implication is actually quite profound.
Gödel was troubled by the inherent bias of interpreting numbers in such a way (that is, that we have a preconceived notion of what “+” or “=” means, which are merely conventions we have grown accustomed to.) And so, Gödel sought to strip the symbols of their interpretations and analyze what I will call their “relational trueness”. The rules and text that he used as inspiration came from Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica. In the jargon of logic, "axioms" would be statements that are given as always being true, basic assumptions, and are used as building blocks for all other rules in the system. A "formula" is a statement, and if this formula proves to be true, then it is known as a "theorem" of the given system (so in arithemtic, that 2+2=4). The authors of this intimidating codex also derived what were known as “formally undecidable principles”, which are "theorems" whose truth cannot seem to be determined, amongst the field of axioms and theorems. In this system, as in much of number theory, a system is consistent only if it contains no contradictions. And also, a system is considered complete if and only if all logically derivable statements within the system are true, which implies that any formula or its negation are included. By creating a system G and a statement g ("I am not provable by G"), Gödel finally succeeded by using these formally undecidable principles to demonstrate that it was impossible to have a system that was both complete and consistent. The basic idea is that, while the statement g was logically possible in the system G, its truth could not be determined unless it contradicted itself, which would make the system inconsistent. And, because g was an allowable statement within G, to exclude it would obviously make the system incomplete.
Thus, he was able to show that a system could never serve as its own proof, and any system that claimed to must be inconsistent. Simply put, he mathematically demonstrated that every formal system must contain at least one such example of uncertainty and so proofs of certainty must reside outside of the system about which they speak. As before, it may be said that this amounts to little more than pilpul, a philosophical tiff to point out that one could possibly find a ridiculously improbable instant where a given thing would fail and use that as proof against a certain rule's truth. Indeed, this is exactly so, and what we are doing is demonstrating the inherent and inevitable Achille's Heel of every so-called “law.”
And so, if experience hasn't already taught us such, we must begin to realize that there is no real certainty of anything. If one is given to placing much importance on supernatural and mystical experiences, then we can also turn to the wisdom of the ancients. The classical civilizations traversed the “golden mean” as Icarus’s prideful wings burst aflame far above and plunged to an untimely demise. The eastern philosophies exhort the middle path, and are rife with paradoxes such as “if one sees the Way, it is not the Way.” These aged ideas actually eerily seem to foreshadow the findings of modern science.
"But, why stop with this one little contradiction? Why not eradicate the entire system of truth and belief?", some may argue further. Indeed, if one traces out the path of all circumstances to this logical conclusion, one is left with absolutely nothing. An immeasurable forest of blackness yawns out before us, and we are forced to realize that there is no purpose to any of this. There is no reason, and we are merely machines, unimaginably complex strings of formulae simply reacting, yet incomprehensible to us. We are lame players in roles assigned by impersonal drones, slaves of the Law of Nature. We are each merely following a track, a Destiny we wish to call it. But in the end, all we are is this. A solution to an equation to describe the state of Existence at this particular moment. There is no reason to assume the Hand of God in any of this. Like LaPlace, we have no need for that hypothesis. Darwin explains everything so well. (Scientific) timelines seem to agree with the ages required to bring Life to the stage it currently is at with its manifold species. The genius (and perhaps sleight-of-hand) of the evolutionary theory is that it specifies that given mutations are random which effectively eliminates the need for an intelligent design theory. The fossil record also seems to corroborate evolution.
Unfortunately, all of this strong scientific evidence is still not enough to do that most impossible of tasks: actually prove anything. Because there lurks in this mountain of evidence, like an unnamed darkness, a single absence of the most decisive piece of proof. In the end, atheism falls victim to the same fallacy as the believers.
There has developed somehow a tacit assumption that scientific hypotheses supercede pure mental examination and other forms of experience. While it is true that evidence gathered from experimentation seems more convincing, and indeed it probably should be, we must remember that science must still be judged by the same standards as all other forms of argument. The argument against belief in God is easy to see. For it, we may separate "belief" into five "levels". We have the middle ground, the agnostics. They have committed the unthinkable crime of saying "I could go either way" or "I believe I will reserve judgment". Then, on either side (which we may designate as Belief and Non-belief) there are two subgroups: those who mostly agree, and those who completely agree. There is suitable reason to fall within the middle-ground of either of these two sides; it is mostly a matter of opinion. But true Belief (or Non-belief, as it is simply a contraction of “To-believe-in-not-believing”) is a whole-hearted acceptance of the claims of whatever particular religion to which one ascribes. There are any number of convincing arguments that could lead one to belief in a higher being, from perceiving the astounding order in the Universe, to the dramatic key similarities in the various Histories of Men, to simply an overbearing gut-feeling that there must be "something" out there and so many more. However, the problem, many atheist scientists and philosophers would point out, is that there is a gulf, a point at which there is no physical or logical evidence which supports undeniably the existence of God. One must simply make a "leap of faith" to truly believe. Some, such as the biologist Richard Dawkins argue that this is damning evidence and that their side (Non-belief) is however supported by mountains of biological and paleontological evidence that show that Evolution explains away the need for God. Science stands as a direct, menacing adversary to Religion.
As stated, Evolution is a random mechanism which can operate independently of any outside source of Creation. God therefore becomes a superfluous decadence, a superstition. And should this be a surprise? Has one not observed that ancient and primitive religions constantly crumble away to disproven "mythologies" under the brilliant light of scientific examination? Does not the evolution of our religions reflect our growing understanding of the world? Did not Nietzsche warn us that fixed beliefs systems are thought prisons? We no longer have gods of the sun, the night, the harvest, of war. We have found explanation to these phenomena and have mostly, for better or worse, cut ourselves free from the world of magic. For the most part, Western Civilization has distilled the Pantheon to one single entity: that which we still do not comprehend, the realm from which we have arisen and are someday destined to fade back into, that of Creation and Eternity. And, many may argue, when we come face-to-face with these great truths, we may find that there is no greater meaning even to these domains, and that there simply is nothing to understand about Nothing.
However, this argument for Non-belief is flawed for the same reason as the argument against Belief. There is an identical gulf between scepticism and atheism which the Non-believer must bridge. Firstly, the line of experimental reasoning does nothing to disprove the existence of God, it merely offers another explanation. And simply because Evolution seems to do an adequate job of explaining the development of Life, and physics currently offers us a more precise vista of the Universe than we have yet enjoyed does not in any way mean that these theories necessarily are the correct and final interpretations of all things. Simply because a thing seems to be so does not actually make it so. It may be that the gears of Existence seem to turn in time to Darwin's ideas, but, just as in the case of God, this cannot be proven to be necessarily true or as a result of only this theory and not some other. The reason returns to the problem of Gödel's theorem. By definition, the Universe should be a complete system, and we certainly may hope that the Universe is consistent, but the problem is that to prove that we have unquestionably found the Answer to all Things would require a view from outside of the system we are already in. However, since that system is the Universe, and we have no way to view ourselves from the outside of this nor to even perceive of things outside of that system, we cannot establish that such a claim is, in fact, correct. For this reason, we must conclude that the system that is "the Universe" is either inconsistent or incomplete. On the one hand, if we suppose it to be complete, then the Universe would contain all possible theorems, that is to say, all possible outcomes and occurrences. But, that would mean that the Universe must also contain its negation, which, to put it nicely, makes it an unattractive option. On the other hand, we can suppose that the Universe is consistent, an option which we are more comfortable with, but then the concept of "the Universe" becomes an idea just as flawed as we are. It is not a true Universe, it becomes shackled as a quasi- "Universe". Further, though modern science may offer a plausible way for the Universe to have evolved, there may be other, equally plausible, explanations. The problem is that we simply cannot know.
And this fundamental flaw, which we are blamelessly destined to bear, permeates through all forms of knowledge, to the extent that we can never actually, truly, know anything. We can be convinced of a thing, there can be no contrary evidence to it throughout all of observable history, and yet, we still must carry with us the reminder that this thing may very well be proven false at any instant. And the second that it does, we must abandon it as untrue. We cannot step outside of the system, but this is the very thing we must do if we ever wish to truly know anything. Thus, it becomes that agnosticism is not an evasion. Rather, it is the logical conclusion of reasoning and an acknowledgment that we cannot view ourselves impartially. We cannot truly know because we cannot separate ourselves from the Universe we are embedded in. We cannot make an outside observation of Everything because we cannot exist outside of Everything. We are merely members, or as some prefer, prisoners of the Universe.
There are those who claim that Belief is Freedom, that one can be content and secure with the knowledge that there are Archetypes; the Platonic Forms exist beyond our view, and we are only shades of Perfection, like Socrates' shadows on the cave wall. We can rest in the comfort of knowing that there is a Greater Meaning to what we do, and that our actions will determine the fate of our own souls. Thus, they have the security of Agency over their Destinies.
Then, others feel just as strongly that this is blind foolishness, and that there is not Meaning, there are no Spirits, no Souls; we are only vessels of blood and bone moving through a cold world. Our “selves” are merely instantaneous representations of a specific instance in a long, complicated equation which governs all Existence. And for this reason, they feel free floating in an empty, black void. However, for them, there will be no purpose, there is ultimately no reason to live. As we are merely solutions, we cannot be held accountable, nor should we seek to have agency over our actions, Free Will is only an illusion. Furthermore, for some, we need not even feel obligated to follow state or moral law, because, since there is no God, there can be no repercussion. Sadly, these cynical pragmatists still worship at the Altar of the God of Science, and they seem blind to the fact that their smug chemical, physical determinism is still only an updated interpretation of Destiny.
But for the agnostics, there is a world of promise. We can live by rational concepts and are not shackled to obviously flawed traditions and superstitions to the same extent that that we are freed from the trappings and inconsistencies of empirical observations carried to unwarranted and unnecessary ends. We carry with us the great potential, the Exception. Each day holds the possibility of the extraordinary and we are bound by no "laws". We know that nothing is certain, no thing carved in stone, and in this, we are truly free.
