Ron Rosenbaum mischaracterizes the views of atheists, such as Richard Dawkins.
Journalist Ron Rosenbaum, author of the brilliant book Explaining Hitler, issues a vigorous defense of agnosticism in a recent piece for Slate magazine. His main thrust, that we should say “I don’t know” when a question hasn’t scientifically verifiable answers, would do any rational skeptic proud. (Coming from me, that’s high praise.) But in affiliating this praiseworthy worldview exclusively with agnosticism, while condemning atheism—particularly the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, et. al.—for supposedly rejecting it, Rosenbaum spouts confused hokum.
According to Rosenbaum, “Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence.”
Poppycock.
Rosenbaum is right in that many atheists see little reason to assume we will never be able to explain existence. After all, science has helped us explain many phenomena we could not understand rationally before and accomplish feats many of us had thought impossible. But that doesn’t mean we will ultimately comprehend everything we currently don’t and surmount every obstacle before us today, as many atheists gladly join Rosenbaum in acknowledging. These atheists, including me, share Rosenbaum’s noble credo of “I don’t know,” which respected scientist and ardent atheist Carl Sagan put another way:
“I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.”
I have read most of the New Atheist books, and I can testify they all enshrine the principles that underlie Sagan’s mantra and drive all science—that we should seek evidence of how the world works, give provisional agreement to theories that best fit the evidence, and withhold such agreement if sufficient evidence is not available to warrant it. This is reason, not faith.
If anything, by exhibiting intense cynicism that we will ever be able to explain how existence began, Rosenbaum’s piece is what oozes the unreason of faith. Because Rosenbaum can’t answer his question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, and he doesn’t know who can, Rosenbaum implies the question is probably unanswerable. This exemplifies the logical fallacy “appeal to ignorance,” which is also a favorite among creationists. (“I can’t fathom how the eye might have evolved, so God did it.”) Unless Rosenbaum is an omniscient member of the Q Continuum masquerading as human, then his inability to answer his question to his own satisfaction hardly demonstrates it’s likely unanswerable. To believe that’s the case anyway, without evidence, would be what evokes religion.
In reply to Rosenbaum’s question, I proffer this:
Whereas scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Victor J. Stenger have devised speculative models consistent with known laws of physics showing how the universe could have began from nothing, we still don’t know for sure.
That doesn’t mean “God did it.” No evidence exists for a creator deity, and I agree with Stenger that this absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence, because it means evidence that should exist were the universe designed is not present. (Similarly, not seeing an elephant in my apartment, and not finding wrecked furniture or pachyderm droppings an elephant should leave in its wake, would be strong evidence an elephant is not in my apartment.) As is the scientific custom, we can provisionally conclude a cosmic designer God does not exist, based only on what we see in the observable universe.
And that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to answer the question. We don’t know enough to consider the origins of the universe fundamentally incomprehensible. Maybe they are, but the point is, we don’t know.
About the Author
I'm Jason Vines, a web developer at a research institution in Washington, DC. I graduated from George Washington University with a bachelor's degree in political science, with a minor in journalism. I enjoy philosophy and web scripting, as well as reading, writing, history, video games, travel, and photography.
