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With all due respect to my guest poster of last week, I have to disagree with her in many points. While I do think that it is possible for science and faith to coexist, I don’t think they can do so as equals. I think it’s only possible to do so if one of the two is ascendant over the other. There are, naturally, two ways this can go: faith over science or science over faith.  Recently, I was contacted by Aileen Stillman, who wanted to write a guest post on this site. As Aileen is both a scientist and a Christian, I thought her perspective on matters of faith and doubt might be interesting, so I agreed. Here’s what she sent me: This might seem like a weird one – a religious position vs a philosophical one – but bear with me. To me, agnosticism is a philosophy, and one that contributes to my code of ethics (although that’s not something I intend to go into today). Because Solipsism poses a particular problem to agnostics, for one very simple reason. But first, to define my terms. Continue reading Agnosticism vs Solipsism It’s amazing how quickly, when challenged, Christians will retreat behind their platitudinous disclaimers. “God moves in mysterious ways” they’ll say. Or perhaps “we can never know the mind of God”. Or, of course, that old favourite, that it’s “ineffable”. Anything that doesn’t make sense is ineffable, which means that it does make sense, but only in the mind of God, so shut up and do as I tell you, you blasphemously questioning sinner. Yeah, I don’t think so. I recently read an article by Julian Baggini entitled What is this foolish lust for uncertainty? He makes some valid points, but like all we windy speakers, he over-generalises. It always strikes me as weird how many atheists still talk about God like he’s real. They talk about him like he’s a person, with feelings and thoughts and the like. Which is odd, because if you asked them, they’d say that they don’t believe in God, but their actions seem to belie that. It took me a while to figure out why, but I’ve at last formed a working hypothesis to explain this. The world of the Blues Brothers presents an interesting challenge to the agnostic, at least as a thought experiment. As a great fan of the movie, I have long stated that I would cheerfully attend any church that was as much fun to go to as the Triple Rock Baptist Church. And let’s face it, you probably would too – a free James Brown performance once a week (or perhaps more often) is nothing to sneeze at. Continue reading They’re on a mission from God I personally find Pascal’s Wager to be an immensely entertaining example of just how wrong you can go with logic. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the idea that we should believe in God whether or not we think he exists, because that way if we’re right, we get to go Heaven. Wikipedia has a pretty good page on it here, which outlines two major objections to it. You should go read it, because what I’ve got to say here won’t make a huge amount of sense unless you’re familar with it. I tend to talk here as if there is only one kind of agnosticism, the kind that I myself subscribe to. In fact, there are rather a lot of them, but the vast majority can be classified into two major types. In theological circles, my agnosticism is of the type generally referred to as ‘soft’ or ‘weak’ agnosticism. It’s the idea that we do not currently know whether or not there is a god (or goddess, or pantheon, etc, etc). The other kind of agnosticism is called ‘hard’ or ‘strong’ agnosticism, and is the idea that we cannot know whether or not there is a god. (As an aside, these terms in their own way illustrate the absolute premium that Western society places on decisiveness and certainty – at least the ‘strong’ agnostic is certain, dammit!) Before I sat down to write this piece, I chanced to re-read Steven Grant and Scott Bieser’s brilliant graphic novel Odysseus The Rebel I mention this because it’s one of the few works I’ve read that really makes a big deal out of the aggressive apatheism of its title character. For Ulysses is indeed an apatheist – and given that the gods do have a verifiable existence within his story, something of a maltheist also, but it’s the former that concerns me here. William Butler Yeats lived in Ireland most of his life. Born in 1865 and dying in 1939, he was raised a Protestant in a land that was increasingly militant in its Catholicism for most of his life. He had a fascination with the occult, and with the legends of Eire. He was a skilled astrologer, and also interested in the more mystical side of Christianity. It’s hard, therefore, to say what he believed in. The arc of his spiritual evolution is too complex, and resists easy summation. I don’t actually have a problem with the idea of laying down one’s life for something you believe in – I can think of several causes I would be proud to give mine for – but there are certain times and places where I do have a problem with it. |
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