Skeptical

It was a warm spring day in April 2005. I was discussing philosophy with my younger brother while he was trying to re-seed my mother’s lawn. As Scotty did not seem to mind the diversion, we began to explore our respective worldviews in more depth than ever before. At one point he allowed that he had committed some of his thoughts to paper. I asked if I could have a copy. He readily agreed. When he asked if I could do the same for him I had to admit that I had never put any of my philosophical thoughts to paper, but would get right to it. Thus began the process that led to this book. Does God exist? If so, does he care about me? Those are questions I have had since childhood. Will definitive answers ever be available? Not that I can see. To some, God is a certainty. They feel his presence. His existence is not in doubt. I, conversely, seem to have been born without a spiritual detection system. I have been told that I will discover the answer when I expire, but that revelation won’t be helpful while I live. I can deal only with what is available now. For questions that are unlikely to be resolved in my lifetime, it comforts me to have a most probable answer, a default explanation that is “close enough” until something better turns up. For most of my seventy-two years I have been aware that others have wondered about the same things that have most puzzled me: How did we get here? Do we have a purpose? How big is the universe? Most of these questions, I have learned, do not have answers to which most would agree. In my mid-teens I concluded that I would have to settle for what makes the most sense while I searched for what was really true. By accepting this course I had unwittingly adopted one of the tenets of science, but more on that will follow. Philosophy, according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. In this book you will quickly notice my bias for the branch of philosophy known as scientific naturalism. Scientific naturalism is concerned with types of reasoning and methods that attempt to arrive at scientific conclusions, a description of the tangible, the natural world. Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical world view holding that there is nothing but natural things, forces, and causes of the kind studied by natural sciences. It seems that metaphysical naturalism is closely allied with scientific naturalism, with metaphysical naturalism being somewhat more explicit in denying the possibility of anything supernatural. Science does not make any claims about the supernatural. It does not deny the existence of supernatural or spiritual entities. Science simply ignores the supernatural because the supernatural offers nothing that can be tested. The supernatural cannot be studied using the scientific method. Pseudo-scientists (e.g. astrologers, alien-visitor detectives, ghost hunters, intelligent design proponents) would disagree with the last two statements, but that is because they do not have a good understanding of what science is about. At this point let me define a few terms that are pertinent to my treatise. God is the proposed supernatural entity, having unlimited power and wisdom, who created, and governs, the universe. An atheist lacks belief in any gods. A theist believes there is one or more gods. A monotheist believes there is only one god. A polytheist believes there is more than one god. A deist believes in a creating, but impersonal, god. An agnostic believes the existence of a god is unknowable. Humanists attach importance to human rather than supernatural entities. A biocentrist believes that all life forms are equally valuable. I used to think that atheists positively affirm that there are no gods, but Richard Dawkins, perhaps the best known atheist alive, says in The God Delusion (2006) that atheists simply lack belief in a god. He lists seven positions in his “spectrum of possibilities” concerning belief. I will shorten them to five: 1) Strong theist. 100 % certain that [my] God exists. 2) High probability, but less than 100%, that God exists. 3) 50% probability that God exists or not, the popular, but incorrect view of agnosticism. 4) Low probability, but short of zero, that any god exists. 5) Strong atheist. 100% certain that no gods exist. In this array I would land, along with Dawkins, in category four. For most of my life I had been calling myself an agnostic, but it was never a 50/50 deal. My lack of belief in a god makes me an atheist, even as I maintain that the existence or non-existence of a god is unknowable. The god for which I yield a small probability is a deistic god, a universe creator who might be watching what is going on, but does not interfere in affairs on Earth. I could never be a strong atheist. Not only would it be unscientific to claim something with certainty, but it would also say that I know that many of my best friends are dead wrong. I can’t say that. My inability to detect supernatural entities may be a personal deficiency. Still, I await evidence. There are several definitions of the word skeptic. Paul Kurtz, in Skepticism and Humanism (2001), covers them nicely. An extreme form Kurtz calls “total negative skepticism,” or nihilism, where the proponent believes nothing is real or true, where there can be no objective standards or principles. Another form was coined by David Hume as “mitigated skepticism,” where, though ultimate truth about the world is unattainable, we must pragmatically and conditionally accept what appears to be true in order to make any progress at all. Kurtz then lists unbelief (or disbelief) as yet another type of skepticism held in two forms, reflective unbelief and a priori unbelief, both usually applied to religion, the paranormal, and the occult, and both denying unproven claims rather than offering anything new. Finally, Kurtz describes skeptical inquiry as being closely allied with disbelief of unproven claims, but having an investigatory element that can lead to scientific progress. Excited by scientific progress, I emphatically fit in the last category. I find ancient scripture interesting, but unexciting. Perhaps it is because those writings were made before the advent of science, and in ages where superstition and credulity ruled. Being skeptical, I do not mean that I go through life continually doubting everything people tell me. I tend to take people at their word, unless they lose my trust. And if they convey information based on extraordinary beliefs honestly held, rather than verifiable facts, I still respect and honor those opinions, though I am not compelled to believe them. Honesty is not in doubt, and opinions need not be questioned, only to be respected and recognized as such. As Robert Green Ingersoll said in 1880, “No matter what we believe, shake hands and let it go. That is your opinion; this is mine: let us be friends.” I am especially dubious of what can be called extraordinary claims. Examples of extraordinary claims are alien beings have visited the Earth and supernatural entities exist. I do not reject these claims out of hand. I read and consider arguments pro and con, weigh and assign probabilities to what evidence might exist, and then make what I hope are rational decisions on conditional acceptance or non-acceptance, that is, open to change my mind if demanded by new information. Armed with all of these definitions how can I define myself? I guess this leaves me a skeptical, atheistic, slightly deistic, half humanistic and half biocentric, scientific naturalist. How’s that for a mouthful? I might be fully biocentric if not for stinkbugs.