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There are three Barnes & Noble locations in the Buffalo area. Pre-pandemic, I frequented a location near the University at Buffalo, going there on a near-daily basis. The near-UB location has easily the most extensive philosophy section of the three. Since 2021, I've been a regular at a different location, and have had to make do with an inferior philosophy selection. So I've mostly read material from other sections. Today, however, I'm back to my original B&N stomping grounds. Because of the change of venue, I was able to pick up a book I've never before seen or heard of, 'Respectful Atheism' by Thomas Sheridan. Published in 2021, the book was apparently partially inspired by a continuing education course of the same title that Sheridan taught at Tufts sometime (or sometimes, rather--he apparently led the course for multiple sessions) during the 2015-2020 timespan. I found the following passage from the introduction worth sharing:
'Consider a report by Lee Billings in Scientific American in March 2019, quoting a Dartmouth physicist named Marcelo Gleiser, who just won the Templeton Prize. This prize is an annual award of the John Templeton Foundation, which promotes the idea that religion and science are fully compatible (I will have more to say on that controversial issue later).
[Gleiser]: "To me, science is one way of connecting with the mystery of existence. And if you think of it that way, the mystery of existence is something that we have wondered about ever since people began asking questions about who we are and where we came from. So while those questions are now part of scientific research, they are much, much older than science....As a theoretical physicist and also someone who spends time out in the mountains, this sort of questioning offers a deeply spiritual connection with the world, through my mind and through my body. Einstein would have said the same thing, I think, with his cosmic religious feeling....I believe we should take a much humbler approach to knowledge, in the sense that if you look carefully at how science works, you'll see that, yes, it is wonderful--magnificent!--but it has limits. And we have to understand and respect those limits. And by doing that, by understanding how science advances, science really becomes a deeply spiritual connection with the mysterious, about all the things we don't know. So that's one answer to your question. And that has nothing to do with organized religion, obviously, but it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic....
I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It's a statement, a categorical statement, that expresses belief in nonbelief: Namely, 'I don't believe, even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don't believe.' Period. It's a declaration. But in science we don't really do declarations. We say, 'Okay. You can have a hypothesis; you have to have some evidence against or for that.' And so an agnostic would say, 'Look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god. What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?' But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn't know about. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, and all that. This positions me very much against all the 'new atheist' guys--even though I want my message to be respectful of people's beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on."
Gleiser makes a beautiful statement; however, I would take issue with his use of the word "atheist" and whether atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. He is quite correct that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In other words, one cannot logically prove that there is no God, even though no evidence, credible in a scientific sense (more on that later), has ever shown up. And, as Dawkins has maintained, if any such evidence were to appear, it would turn all of science upside down. In the same manner, one cannot prove that there is no pink unicorn or tooth fairy somewhere. So if one wants to argue that being an atheist means 100 percent certainty that no evidence could ever possibly exist, then no one could legitimately use the term. In that extremist sense, I would have to go along with him and claim to be an agnostic.
But it seems to me that if one is 99.9 percent certain that there is no God (of the type cited here, namely the traditional all-powerful, all-knowing, loving being who observes and cares for each individual person), then use of the term "atheist" seems to be entirely appropriate. After all, that is precisely the way that science claims to work: It employs inferential statistics, a null hypothesis. The null hypothesis is a statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena or conditions (e.g. Nature exists and God exists), in which lack of relationship is assumed to be true until statistical evidence indicates otherwise. The physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva examined millions of particle collisions and finally had to reject the null hypothesis to "prove" that the Higgs boson existed. No such data have even been sufficient to reject the null hypothesis that God does not exist; therefore, I regard the term "atheist" to be appropriate for all commonsense uses where one is quite confident in one's disbelief and in keeping with the methods of science.'
I really like the framing of the matter in terms of the null hypothesis. It would be quite the trickster deity that made all components of the universe theoretically discoverable except for its own presence. But this logic is predicated on the idea that a god would in some sense be a part of this universe rather than completely removed from it. Drawing from science as Sheridan does, though, I think the issue of the potential existence of a god or gods is more analogous to the idea that a multiverse could exist. If our perceptual and intellectual tools are limited to making deductions and inductions within the confines of this universe, then strictly speaking, we must remain agnostic about the possibility of the existence of any extra-universal phenomena, gods or a multiversal universe-plex included. The logic of quantum physics may be such that universes should be theoretically birthable an infinite number of times...but we're still extrapolating from a [known, or knowable] sample size of one in that case. I remain open to being convinced otherwise on logical matters pertaining to our ability to 'rationally speculate' about the possible existence of extra-universal phenomena. Cheers.
PS: I obviously don't think Sheridan should have used 'God exists' as one of his two examples of 'measured phenomena or conditions', as that would fall into the alternative category of 'mere assertion'. The book seems to have suffered a bit from shoddy editing (in one paragraph not quoted here, he spells the surname of an anti-atheist author no less than three different ways), but the overall point made in the quoted passage is good enough to not be marred by such a minor error
I agree. Largely he and atheism are on the same page, but he has bought into the very prevalent Theist mispresentation of atheism as a categorical denial.
On my Other board I recently posted about how even experts when they are off their area of expertise should go to the authorities of that expertise to get clued up; he should have talked to atheists before he published.
I declare myself an atheist. If new evidence comes along, convincing enough that a god exists, I'll declare myself a theist, no problem. Some people just seem determined that they don't want to use the word atheist. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in the existence of god. That's it. There's nothing wrong with it and we don't need to avoid treading on eggshells to say it, any more that a theist needs to avoid using the word theist.
My wife was averse to the word "atheist" although I think over the 15 years we've been together she has overcome that. She has never believed in any god. Her objection to the term was purely social. And it's understandable as women overall tend to be more socially sensitive than men.
That said, neither of us lead with our atheism publicly, as it tends to create heat rather than light. I use the term only in philosophical conversations and those mostly only happen for me here.
[Gleiser]: "To me, science is one way of connecting with the mystery of existence. And if you think of it that way, the mystery of existence is something that we have wondered about ever since people began asking questions about who we are and where we came from. So while those questions are now part of scientific research, they are much, much older than science....As a theoretical physicist and also someone who spends time out in the mountains, this sort of questioning offers a deeply spiritual connection with the world, through my mind and through my body. Einstein would have said the same thing, I think, with his cosmic religious feeling....I believe we should take a much humbler approach to knowledge, in the sense that if you look carefully at how science works, you'll see that, yes, it is wonderful--magnificent!--but it has limits. And we have to understand and respect those limits. And by doing that, by understanding how science advances, science really becomes a deeply spiritual connection with the mysterious, about all the things we don't know. So that's one answer to your question. And that has nothing to do with organized religion, obviously, but it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic....
I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It's a statement, a categorical statement, that expresses belief in nonbelief: Namely, 'I don't believe, even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don't believe.' Period. It's a declaration. But in science we don't really do declarations. We say, 'Okay. You can have a hypothesis; you have to have some evidence against or for that.' And so an agnostic would say, 'Look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god. What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?' But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn't know about. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, and all that. This positions me very much against all the 'new atheist' guys--even though I want my message to be respectful of people's beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on."
This seems yet another attempt to carve out the matter or question of deities as somehow special above all other questions.
"I don't believe any speakers of Gothic exist."
"I don't believe in Yetis."
"I don't believe Captain Ahab wasn't a real person."
None of these are controversial statements. Yet, technically, there's no real reason to think that there can't be a handful of Gothic speakers in Crimea or elsewhere, that Yetis are definitively disproven, that Herman Melville couldn't possibly have been secretly describing a human that actually lived. We simply rely on the concept that these rather fantastic eventualities can be dismissed without affirmative evidence.
But somehow, for some special reason, disbelief in the existence of deities must be held to some higher exacting standard, so - for example - no linguist will be criticized for not entertaining the possibility that Gothic is somewhere extant, while for anyone to dismiss the notion of Zeus and Ra and Vishnu and all the rest is just beyond the pale.
My wife was averse to the word "atheist" although I think over the 15 years we've been together she has overcome that. She has never believed in any god. Her objection to the term was purely social. And it's understandable as women overall tend to be more socially sensitive than men.
That said, neither of us lead with our atheism publicly, as it tends to create heat rather than light. I use the term only in philosophical conversations and those mostly only happen for me here.
This makes me chuckle, because when I mentioned being an atheist to my grandmother (who, like most of my family, was never that religiously observant), she gasped and said, “You should tell people you’re an agnostic!” Her reaction wasn’t “how dare you defame God!” so much as “what will the neighbors think?” I assured her that the topic is nowhere near as scandalous today as it once was, especially within our social circles.
I don’t discuss my atheism in real life much, not because I’m ashamed or fear confrontation, but because it’s not really an important part of my identity. I view the world through the lens of an ethnocultural Jew who, like quite a few ethnocultural Jews, is also an atheist. But exploring and discussing the atheist aspects of my beliefs on this subforum has been interesting, especially as I have grown bored of the on-topic forums for which City-Data was originally created.
I declare myself an atheist. If new evidence comes along, convincing enough that a god exists, I'll declare myself a theist, no problem. Some people just seem determined that they don't want to use the word atheist. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in the existence of god. That's it. There's nothing wrong with it and we don't need to avoid treading on eggshells to say it, any more that a theist needs to avoid using the word theist.
Growing up in a rigid, Totalitarian Fundamentalist church, I had many misconceptions of what an Atheist was.....Until I left that cult and got out into the real world. During my college years, I had a room mate who was an atheist and he was NOT in any way shape or form like what the aforementioned church said that Atheists were. He had morals, unlike what I was taught in church, in fact his moral compass was much higher than anyone else's. He had no self hatred therefore no need for racism, misogyny, homophobia. He had no desire to end religion, but he did demonstrate that decisions should be made in one's best interest (within the limits of state and federal laws as I was often reminded)
Now, As an Atheist, I understand. I do not believe that a God exists. I go one step further in suggesting (hypothesis?) that a NEED for a god does not exist in my life at least.
I do not DENY that a God exists, but I see no evidence for one nor do I see a need for one.
My wife was averse to the word "atheist" although I think over the 15 years we've been together she has overcome that. She has never believed in any god. Her objection to the term was purely social. And it's understandable as women overall tend to be more socially sensitive than men.
That said, neither of us lead with our atheism publicly, as it tends to create heat rather than light. I use the term only in philosophical conversations and those mostly only happen for me here.
We're the opposite. When we moved from the UK to the US, my husband quietly told me not to go around telling people I'm an atheist. I was like, "huh"? In the UK nobody cares about that.
I told him I'm not going to lie, and if anybody asks, I'll tell them, and always have.
If people are offended, that's up to them. It's only caused me any issue once. Someone that befriended me when I first moved here was a regular churchgoer. When I mentioned I didn't believe in god, it was like an icy fog filled the room, like something out of a movie, haha. Never seen someones demeanor change like that.
We still keep in touch but after that the relationship was never the same. But I just think if she can't get past that, that's on her, not me and she wasn't worth the friendship.
Apart from that one person, it's just never been an issue.
Socially I think we need to claim the word and not shy away from it. As people know, I'm respectful to people of faith. People of faith need to return the sentiment.
We're the opposite. When we moved from the UK to the US, my husband quietly told me not to go around telling people I'm an atheist. I was like, "huh"? In the UK nobody cares about that.
I told him I'm not going to lie, and if anybody asks, I'll tell them, and always have.
If people are offended, that's up to them. It's only caused me any issue once. Someone that befriended me when I first moved here was a regular churchgoer. When I mentioned I didn't believe in god, it was like an icy fog filled the room, like something out of a movie, haha. Never seen someones demeanor change like that.
We still keep in touch but after that the relationship was never the same. But I just think if she can't get past that, that's on her, not me and she wasn't worth the friendship.
Apart from that one person, it's just never been an issue.
Socially I think we need to claim the word and not shy away from it. As people know, I'm respectful to people of faith. People of faith need to return the sentiment.
I don't disagree, but I think for many people it is just not an important enough topic to limit themselves socially. Of course that's a much bigger deal in, say, the Bible Belt South; much depends on where you live, and also on your personality. My wife is naturally withheld and cautious (though not at all timid or shy) and therefore slow to get to know and to make friends as it is.
In my case I did for a time have a weekly situation with a group of older men (mostly older than me) where we would play cards and discuss whatever, and I made no effort to conceal my progressive politics or my unbelief, and they gradually figured out that these were characteristics of me. There turned out to be one other atheist in the group and the others were willing to let it go and treat me with respect anyway. If it hadn't worked out that way, I would have quit going and wouldn't have missed it very much; I'm pretty heady and introverted and have very modest social needs. My wife though was socialized differently and has a different personality; she gets lonely and needs friendships to help anchor her, especially now that she's retired. This is common with motherless daughters (her mother died young after a long incurable illness). One feels untethered in the world.
It's a pretty easy concept, treat others as you would like to be treated.
Don't be obnoxious about your views and don't belittle and attack others over them.
Doesn't matter the topic, religion, politics, diet, race, sports team.......anything.
It's really not an easy or simple concept. And it's inappropriate to treat it that way when you have one "side" that is so dominant in a culture versus another side that is and has been so diminished over decades...and in fact...centuries.
It's a pretty easy concept, treat others as you would like to be treated.
Don't be obnoxious about your views and don't belittle and attack others over them.
Doesn't matter the topic, religion, politics, diet, race, sports team.......anything.
The problem that makes it less than simple is that the slightest disagreement or dissent, however gently and kindly presented, is then gaslighted as obnoxious, belittling and attacking. This is how they escape actually engaging in discussions on the merits, and actually addressing any points raised.
It is easier to tap dance around this in general social situations, but this is a place where people supposedly come to actually discuss the issues at hand. Some of those people are so used to an echo chamber that they loose it over the slightest failure to think highly of their every thought.
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