by Ethan Johnson
March 13, 2007

In my experience, "skeptical" blogs tend to favor science/empiricism over all else, and tend to actively beat up on organized religion, spirituality, superstition, and dogma. Not that these subjects don't lend themselves to a fair amount of bashing - burquas, anyone? How about being stoned for sinning? How about letting a superstition stand in the way of positive action? However, such blogs tend to raise the spectre of "atheism", which I cannot support in good conscience. Here's why.

Back in the days of the Apple II, my friends and I were actively interested in learning all we could about computers. Being that BASIC pretty much fills a thimble relative to today's programming languages and technological advances, that was a fairly brief quest. One convention that amused me was abs(x), which told the computer to use the absolute value of x. I don't recall why one would want to use this convention, but my uber-nerdy friend found it hilarious when I said that the chances of so-and-so getting a date to the dance was abs(0). Haaa! Nerds!

More seriously, in my estimation, this is what "atheism" as I understand it boils down to. "The probability that there is a god or gods is abs(0)." As always, I am in complete agreement when God is defined in mortal, finite terms, such as being akin to Santa Claus or a stern parent. Greek mythology shows their gods (plural) to be quite a schizophrenic, micromanaging bunch. Looking at the structure of most Fortune 500 companies, if certain trivialities don't rise to the level of being of concern to the CEO, and if politically (USA) many things don't rise to the level of the President, then how can we be so sure that the most mundane things rise to the level of God?

However, I do not believe that the scope and breadth of human understanding has risen to such a degree that we can definitively rule out the existence of "God" in the abstract, any more than we can definitively declare ourselves to be completely alone in the universe. To such claims I ask, "oh really? Have you explored the entire universe? What's it like? Besides 'big' I mean?"

Conversely, I do not believe that God is so incredibly micromanaging that we're all doomed to eternal damnation pretty much from birth. I think we all have our lives to live, and if God is there at the end pushing the "down" elevator button, oh well! Might as well lead the best lives possible - and I don't mean racing to be the one who dies with the most toys.

Some skeptic types make all sorts of hay beating up on Young Earth Creationists, and why not? To say that the Earth is a mere 6-10,000 years old is plain silly. As I like to say, calling yourself a Young Earth Creationist is easier to spell out than [sticking your finger between your lips and going "beebeebebebebebedeeedeebebebdbebebebeedeee"]. But I posit that the same may be said about:

• People who declare the Earth to be the center of the Universe
• Atheists
• People who don't believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life

Note that I'm not stretching this to mean someone who is agnostic, which I am defining as holding open the possibility in some small measure, but not making/scrapping plans around it. Every day, we have a slim chance of a UFO touching down on the White House lawn. That hasn't happened yet, so life goes on without taking that possibility into account. Asteroids/comets haven't slammed into Earth, cracking it in half either, which is arguably a more pressing concern.

But will these things ever happen? Possibly. And when they do, we'll adjust accordingly.

Skeptics like to say that they don't want their lives dictated by someone who believes in the Easter Bunny. To them, I say that I don't want anyone in charge of our scientific development who can't tell the difference between possibility and probability either. After all, they've already declared a loser with far less than 1% of all votes counted. And that's better than the "believers" how, exactly? <EM>