The Unquiet American

During the Q&A session of a lecture given by the English born editor of The Humanist magazine, it was observed that one audience member appeared agitated, as though he felt he wasn't getting a satisfactory answer from the guest speaker.

The issue being honed in upon by the questioner was whether an absolute truth could be determined, and if not, did that not allow room for the existence of god, or indeed, did that not allow for anything to be possible?

Speaking with the questioner after the Q&A session, I was struck by his nervous disposition; an information sheet from the lecture was methodically being turned into confetti in his hands, as he doggedly harried my friend and I for the concession that he desperately, almost pathologically, needed.

"Do you think that there might be a God?"

"Of course" I replied.

He eased noticeably and went on to explain that "he often attended evenings like this one" and added that "people felt that he gave them a hard time". I didn't wonder at that second point. While our questioner, an American named B, was never violent, he was as persistent and determined as anyone can be in the course of 'civil' conversation, and he seemed, for all the world, to be 'on a mission' to exact, and extract, from his opponents the concession which I'd, quite straightforwardly, given him.

B explained that he was (or had been?) a believer and it was at that point I was surprised to notice a sense of relief within myself. This admission, which paradoxically had not occurred to me, explained his persistence and agitation during the question and answer session, and his apparent lack of satisfaction in the responses he received.

In my mind, however, my answer to B that God might well exist was not an admission that God does exist.

It appears to be a fairly common argument put by believers; because nothing can be proven absolutely then anything is possible, especially God.

It seems perfectly obvious and reasonable that nothing can be proven absolutely (and it occurs to me that even that fact cannot be proven absolutely!) but that does not render worthless that slowly expanding bubble of knowledge in which we do have considerable confidence.

The argument that B, and other believers, seem to be trying to push here, appears analogous to saying "seat belts did not prevent injury or fatality in one incident therefore all seat belts can be considered useless and ought to be discarded".

It is a flawed argument, and seems to be one of the most desperate, and weakest, in the arsenal of the believers in attempting to justify their belief in (if not 'the impossible', then, at best, the extremely improbable.

This might be an appropriate time to unsheath Ockham's Razor; the principle that, barring external bias or influence, the simpler of two possibilities is generally the correct one. In this case, we have two options; an infinitely powerful, but apparently deeply insecure being (see later, in The Ten Commandments), created the entire universe in six days along with two humans to whom the entire enterprise was dedicated, banished the aforementioned humans for realising morality, disappeared for generations, popped back for a visit and didn't like the way the new tenants were, in his eyes, trashing the place, saved a handful of people on an Ark (along with two of every species of animal - including two of each of the 8 million variety of insects), disappeared again for generations, reappeared in the guise of his 'only son' (meaning that Adam was not God's son, even though God created him?), sacrificed himself to himself for forgiveness of humanity from himself, promised to his apostles a 'second coming' within their lifetime and then disappeared, once more, for generations on end, making only fleeting appearances, for example in a portion of the Orion Nebula, irons, toast, rust stains and other curious locations

OR

god never existed and the universe, and life, began from a simple beginning, and developed complexity through environmental influences and an allotment of time which is longer than any in human experience.

I don't think that any reasoning, rational individual can categorically state that god does not exist. Indeed, it would seem that there is very little, if anything, that can be stated with categorical and absolute certainty, let alone the hotly disputed existence of the most vague and ambiguous identities known to humanity.

That said, unless a life is to be lived forever saying "I don't know", and if a bet, even if it is hedged, must be placed in order for us to choose a basis on which to found our perspective on life, then could one not do much worse than to follow the advice given in the Atheist Bus Campaign from London:

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."