Since it’s often hard to write about one’s godlessness without sounding arrogant (there are good arguments as to why this is a learned response due to constant indoctrination in the idea that "belief is good") it’s nice to find writing by others that communicates the issues well.

I lifted the following extract from Michael Kaplan’s Sorting It All Out (a great tech blog dealing mainly with internationalization issues on Microsoft platforms). The original text is from Carl Sagan’s Contact.

“You don′t want to believe in God.” Joss said it as a simple statement. “You figure you can be a Christian and not believe in God. Let me ask you straight out: Do you believe in God?”

“The question has a peculiar structure. If I say no, do I mean I am convinced God doesn′t exist, or do I mean I′m not convinced that he does exist? Those are two very different statements.”

“Let′s see if they are so very different, Dr. Arroway. May I call you ‛Doctor′? You believe in Occam′s Razor, isn′t that right? If you have two different, equally good explanations of the same experience, you pick the simplest. The whole history of science supports it, you say. Now, if you have serious doubts about whether there is a God – enough doubts so you′re unwilling to commit yourself to the faith – then you must be able to imagine a world without God: a world that comes into being without God, a world that goes about its everyday life without God, a world where people die without God. No punishment. No reward. All the saints and prophets, all the faithful who have ever lived – why, you′d have to believe they were foolish. Deceived themselves, you′d probably say. That would be a world in which we weren′t here on Earth for any good reason – I mean for any purpose. It would all just be complicated collisions of atoms – is that right? Including the atoms that are inside of human beings.

“To me, that would be a hateful and inhuman world. I wouldn′t want to live in it. But if you can imagine that world, why straddle? Why occupy some middle ground? If you believe all that already, isn′t it much simpler to say there′s no God? You′re not being true to Occam′s Razor. I think you′re waffling. How can a thoroughgoing conscientious scientist be an agnostic if you can even imagine a world without God? Wouldn′t you just have to be an atheist?”

It′s at this point that I would be on my feet shouting: “FINE! YES I′M AN ATHEIST YOU FEEBLE-MINDED WORM!” – but Carl Sagan′s Ellie has a much more nuanced response…

“I thought you were going to argue that God is the simpler hypothesis,” Ellie said, “but this is a much better point. If it were only a matter of scientific discussion, I′d agree with you Reverend Joss. Science is essentially concerned with examining and correcting hypotheses. If the laws of nature explain all the available facts without supernatural intervention, or even do only as well as the God hypothesis, then for the time being I′d call myself an atheist. Then if a single piece of evidence was discovered that doesn′t fit, I′d back off from atheism. We′re fully able to detect some breakdown in the laws of nature. The reason I don′t call myself an atheist is because this isn′t mainly a scientific issue. It′s a religious issue and a political one. The tentative nature of scientific hypothesis doesn′t extend into those fields. You don′t talk about God as a hypothesis. You think you′ve cornered the truth, so I point out that you may have missed a thing or two. But if you ask, I′m happy to tell you: I can′t be sure I′m right.”

Although I recognize that atheism is much more a political concept than a scientific one, the fact that the world is increasingly dividing itself along lines of faith makes me lament the fact the science has been sidelined so effectively by politics. I think the scientific community needs to speak up in the name of common sense, even if that means stepping into the socio-political arena, and thankfully it’s starting to happen.

What I think may be abuse is labeling children with religious labels like Catholic child and Muslim child. I find it very odd that in our civilization we’re quite happy to speak of a Catholic child that is 4 years old or a Muslim child that is 4, when these children are much too young to know what they think about the cosmos, life and morality. We wouldn’t dream of speaking of a Keynesian child or a Marxist child. And yet, for some reason we make a privileged exception of religion. And, by the way, I think it would also be abuse to talk about an atheist child.

Thank God for Richard Dawkins :)