Hurrah for Ron Rosenbaum!

Who? 

What?  You mean you have never heard of Ron Rosenbaum! 

Oh, alright then, I 'fess up, neither had I until today but now he is my new best friend, although the news may not have reached him yet.  Courtesy of the ever-excellent Arts & Letters Daily I was pointed to an essay in Slate written by Mr. Rosenbaum.  I suspect he might be Professor, or even Doctor, Rosenbaum because he is obviously fearfully knowledgeable and mixes in high academic circles.  However, his greatest intellectual virtue is that he agrees with me!

I cannot compute the number of times on this blog and others when I have come to verbal fisticuffs with militant athiests.  Oddly enough, I cannot remember a single occasion in which I had a fight with a theist, but the atheists, or the New Atheists, as exemplified by the apoplectic Richard Dawkins, come across as born-again fundamentalists which is why I normally refer to him as 'Bishop' Dawkins.  The reason for the mutual antagonism is that I remain a convinced agnostic.  On every occasion I point out to them that the proposition that God exists, and its negative, cannot be proven.  They are propositions outside the scope of science.

Rosenbaum, being more intelligent than me, puts it better:

Faced with the fundamental question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually.

That their beliefs are faith-based is something I have hurled at atheists many a time and oft'.  It drives them potty.  But the fact, uncomfortable to them, is that the very fundamental and basic question of how something can come of nothing remains unsolved and unsolveable.  Rosenbaum contemptuously dismisses the wilder thrashings of the scientific community to answer the unanswerable:

Recently scientists have tried to answer it with theories of "multiverses" and "vacuums filled with quantum potentialities," none of which strikes me as persuasive. (For a review of the centrality, and insolubility so far, of the something-from-nothing question, I recommend this podcast interview with Jim Holt, who is writing a book on the subject.)

He continues:

Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Just because other difficult-seeming problems have been solved does not mean all difficult problems will always be solved. And so atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to prove by logic the possibility of creation "ex nihilo" (from nothing). His eventual explanation entailed a Supreme Being standing outside of time and space somehow endowing it with existence (and interfering once in a while) without explaining what caused this source of "uncaused causation" to be created in the first place.

However, what I like about his essay is his militancy which advocates, in effect, Agnostic Pride!  Well, if the gays can have pride why not us agnostics?  We might take the title of his article for our placards:

   AN AGNOSTIC MANIFESTO

At least we know what we don't know!

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, I am tempted to shout

Now, Gods, stand up for agnostics!

but the delicious irony might excite my delicate temperament too much.  Rosenbaum sums up the new agnostic pride, thus:

[T]here are really two claims agnosticism is concerned with: Whether God exists or not is one. Whether we can know the answer is another. Agnosticism is not for the simple-minded and is not as congenial as atheism and theism are.  The courage to admit we don't know and may never know what we don't know is more difficult than saying, sure, we know. (My emphasis)

Rosenbaum's essay is worth reading in full.

 

Comments

[dearieme]

"..."Why is there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually." That is false. Since one counter-example will do, I cite me. I'm an atheist and I most certainly don't believe that "science will tell us eventually". I go further - it's the sort of vague question that a sciencist isn't for. A philosopher might be handier. He might ask, for instance, whether the question embodies a false dichotomy. He might enquire whether, indeed, it has any meaning at all. He might wonder what sort of evidence or reasoning could throw light on it. Meanwhile, the scientist worries about leaks in his apparatus and whether his instruments need recalibration.

[David Duff]

No, no, 'DM', it won't do!

To be a proper atheist, so I am told at length by 'proper' atheists, you simply must believe that all the truly fundamental questions, such as 'something from nothing', will eventually fall to the all-devouring appetite of science because, you see, if you are a rationalist then nothing, absolutely nothing, must be left out of the ultimate explanation - which is just around the corner, or so they tell me.

If, as you appear to do, you definitely believe that science will never tell us one way or another whether there is an ultimate 'originator' (to use a neutral term) then you must join us in the Brotherhood of Agnostics, (I'll teach you the secret handshake and all that sort of thing) albeit, like me, with a strong-ish predilection towards atheism. We're a broad, er, church and you can lean in which ever direction you like! The only belief we will not permit is that God definitely exists, or God definitely does not exist.

[dearieme]

My lengthy and beautifully argued reply has evidently not reached you. I must have annoyed Big G.

[David Duff]

Honestly, 'DM', you'll have to go back to night school and re-learn how to use these new-fangled computer-thingies!

By the way, have you any idea what's up with 'Deogolwulf'? He's been on the 'missing list' for yonks.

[dearieme]

Aye, it's a great pity. But he had been expressing a degree of ennui/malaise/brownedoffness for some time.

[David Duff]

Ah yes, the fate of all true re-actionaries, alas.