I Am Not An Expert

I’ll be the first to admit that I have at times been a smug dick when it comes to my atheism. I’ve had conversations with everyone from apologists to creationists and all manner of weird in between, and there are times when I’ve been humble and polite and times when I’ve been a raging asshole. Really, it depends on the overall timbre of the conversation and what comments are being bandied about on both sides. I have my hot buttons and I have my overall calm nature, and one will always get the best of the other. I think that’s true of all people, we have this knack of knowing what we know and assuming that others will understand it properly. When they don’t, we often become frustrated either with our lack of ability to communicate our thoughts or with the other person’s inability to hear what we are saying. But at least I know when I’m being a smug dick.

This morning when I got in to my office, I had an email waiting from my friend Chris “Bad Mutha” Hubbard, who is currently enjoying the life of a kept man in Brazil. I was working from home last week due to a brutal head cold, and he and I had been emailing about things. He thought I’d be interested in this link that he found by Paul Prather about how the New Atheists are just a bunch of mean jerks who are just as fundamentalist and dogmatic as Christians.

Now, I’m not going to dissect Mr. Prather’s arguments aside from quietly pointing out that he talks about how unfair it is that the New Atheists generalize all Christians in unflattering ways, a sweeping generalization in and of itself that made me giggle just a little bit. But other than that little drop of smug, I’m not going to try to disprove Prather’s comments. I find those kind of mental masturbation blog posts generally wearying, unless they’re really well done, and since I lack the desire and free time to spend on properly vivisecting this article. Instead, I thought I’d tell you that I am no expert on the universe.

I know it’s big. I know it’s old. I know it’s got a lot of stuff in it, and a lot of not-stuff in it too, though I don’t know for sure what that not-stuff is. I know it’s not ether, though. I know it has rules that seem to be true throughout it. We call those rules physics, and we don’t know them all yet. I know that the planet I live on is around 4 and half billion years old. I know that life on that planet began a long time ago, and has continued to evolve over that time, coping with changes in climate, geography, and all kinds of environmental changes to take us to where we are today. And I know that this process of evolution is not finished yet, that it continues to happen on a scale so small it’s difficult but not impossible to detect. I’m sure there are other things I know about the universe, but those are the big ones.

So is there a God? I can’t answer that. I see no compelling reason to believe in a God or Gods. We do not know what triggered the events at the start of everything or before, and we have at present no way of answering that question aside from speculation. Could a creator have done it all? Sure. Or not. Do we know what triggered those first cells to live? Absolutely not. Could a creator have done it? Sure. Or not. We don’t know.

Without any evidence that says there was a creator, it seems pointless to believe. What’s more, the books of religion that claim to answer those questions are without fail incomplete, inconsistent with what we know to be true, and totally internally contradictory. We are supposed to love our brothers and make slaves of them. We are supposed to all be God’s creatures, but only some of them are the ones he likes best. God is supposed to be infinitely patient and kind, but will do everything in his power to screw you over if you don’t believe in him. You are not supposed to kill, but he God’s reaction to opposition is destruction.

There is a reason I can be smug about the things I know about the world. It is because these are the things that can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. We can see evolution happening in laboratories and in nature. We can see how human-based selection has altered animals and crops over generations, and we can extrapolate how environmental changes would result in the same success and failure process. It all makes logical sense and can be seen in action.

You may speak all you like of your personal relationship with your creator. You may have felt his love in your heart or heard his voice in your ears. You are welcome to this belief. I do not share it and see no reason for it. When you tell me that you believe there is a creator, I see no reason why there couldn’t be. But I see no reason why there could either. You have chosen to fill in the unknown with God. I have simply chosen to leave it unknown. But when you try to argue that the known is actually God, that he directs evolution or lives in our hearts, then you’ve got no leg to stand on with me, and I will no doubt become a smug and arrogant atheist prick.

Jim