Back to Basics 1: The Human Predicament

I've decided to start a new series on The Basics. The motivation is two-fold: to clarify my own thoughts on my intellectual and spiritual journey and to engage others in the conversation. In keeping with the modern 'bite-sized' attention span, I'll try to keep each article brief.

To begin at the beginning, I think a discussion of the human predicament is in order, which is succinctly this: to be human is to be uncertain. As Heisenberg proved, one of the characteristics of the universe that we inhabit is an inherent uncertainty. So the starting point for any discussion of theology and philosophy is the acknowledgment of this fact.

One understanding that I have come to is that a person's outlook on the world is a function of how they react to the condition of uncertainty. A person uncomfortable with uncertainty will tend toward a fundamentalist outlook in religion, philosophy and politics. A person who can tolerate a degree of uncertainty will, on the other hand, tend to take more moderate, even agnostic positions. It only makes sense. If I have a difficult time bearing the thought that my world-view may be wrong, then in order to alleviate this psychological discomfort, I will tend to seek out an ideology that leaves little room for doubt.

In my view, agnosticism has gotten an undeserved bad wrap from certain faith communities as well as some hard-core atheists. It has been derided as 'fence-sitting' and 'refusal to take a stand', but it is neither of these things. It is simply acknowledging a fact - there are some things that we as humans do not or cannot know. If a person says that she is agnostic with regard to the question of God's existence, she is simply giving her best response to the evidence as she understands it. Some evidence makes the existence of deity seem improbable, some evidence leaves open the possibility.

So, returning the main point, if there is precious little that we can be certain about in this life, where does that leave us? Should I refuse to go outside tomorrow because I'm not certain that a piece of a falling satellite might land on me? Should I not apply for that job I'm looking for because I'm not certain I'll get it? Obviously this would be a ridiculous approach to uncertainty, because even though we don't have certainty, we do have something almost as valuable: the ability to determine probabilities. And this is something to keep in mind when discussing theology and philosophy. We are talking about relative probabilities and not certainties.

So when a naturalist says something like, "Life sprung up on earth from purely natural causes", he's just saying that the best evidence he has seen combined with his reasoning faculties have led him to believe that the most probable explanation for life on earth is a natural one. He's not making a statement of faith.

When Richard Dawkins says that God does not exist, he is again making a statement of evidence and probability. When pressed, even Dawkins admits that there is some probability that God exists.

So what's the bottom line? When we discuss theology and philosophy, we must drop the pretense that we have some certain truth. We have evidence. We have our reasoning facilities. We have probabilities. And that's it.