How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [17]
As for my part, I used to be a theist, believing that God’s existence was soluble. Then I became an atheist, believing that God’s nonexistence was soluble. I am now an agnostic, believing that the issue is insoluble. Ever since I made my position known in the pages of Skeptic magazine many years ago, I have received a large volume of correspondence, much of it from atheists who accuse me of copping out or being wishy-washy in using the term agnostic. One wrote: “I, sir, am a plain unqualified atheist. Would you like to hear my reason? Okay, ‘there is no God.’ That’s my reason.” Most skeptics and atheists would agree and argue that there are really only two positions on the God Question: you either believe in God or you do not believe in God—theism or atheism. What’s this agnosticism nonsense, they ask?
If by fiat I had to bet on whether there is a God or not, I would bet that there is not. Indeed, I live my life as if there is no God. And if the common usage of the term atheism was nothing more than “no belief in a God,” I might be willing to adopt it. But this is not the common usage, as we saw in the OED. (And we would do well to remember that dictionaries do not give definitions, they give usages.) Atheism is typically used to mean “disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God” (not to mention its pejorative permutations). But “denial of a God” is an untenable position. It is no more possible to prove God’s nonexistence than it is to prove His existence. “There is no God” is no more defensible than “there is a God.” The problem with the term agnostic, however, is that most people take it to mean that you are unsure or have yet to make up your mind, so the term nontheist might be more descriptive.
Belief or disbelief in God is clearly a decision of considerable personal importance. But making this decision is not a science. For thousands of years the greatest minds of every generation have worked diligently to prove the existence of God, and for thousands of years equally great minds have produced valid refutations of those proofs. The problem may be in the meaning of the word prove. Drawing upon the OED once again, to “prove” means: “to make trial of, put to the test.” How could you possibly put God to the test? There is no conceivable experiment that could confirm or disconfirm God’s existence. There comes a time in the history of an idea when it seems reasonable to conclude that the problem is beyond the human mind to solve. God is insoluble.
WHAT IS GOD?
Although it is almost certainly not possible to define God in any concise way, it would seem remiss not to at least try in any discussion such as this. Studies show that the vast majority of people in the Industrial West who believe in God associate themselves with some form of monotheism, in which God is understood to be all powerful, all knowing, and all good; who created out of nothing the universe and everything in it with the exception of Himself; who is uncreated and eternal, a noncorporeal spirit who created, loves, and can grant eternal life to humans. Synonyms include Almighty, Supreme Being, Supreme Goodness, Most High, Divine Being, the Deity, Divinity, God the Father, Divine Father, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Creator, Author of All Things, Maker of Heaven and Earth, First Cause, Prime Mover, Light of the World, Sovereign of the Universe, and so forth.
Many scientists, however, feel that such discussions about the nature of and belief in God are meaningless, tantamount to asking, as anthropologist Donald Symons did, “Do you believe [fill in any three letters] exists?” Symons explained:
You have to know more about what’s in the brackets and how its existence or nonexistence might be determined or, at /east. what kinds of evidence might potentially bear on the question. If you find out that the questioner has essentially no ideas about the characteristics of