Idea Architecture

Jug Suraiya has an interesting article in The Times of India dated 14th, June 2008. It lambasts a research/survey which claims that atheists are smarter than theists. When I read the first few lines I was appalled; how could good ol’ Jug Suraiya do this. As an agnostic myself, I was offended that Jug Suraiya thought that Atheism/Agnosticism did not need intellect.

But after completing the whole article I was in splits. Jug Suraiya contends,

Atheism requires no special brain power. It’s as easy as falling off a log. It’s believing in a God who — omnipotently, omnisciently — creates all these horrors, and more (Hitler, Hiroshima, Mao, Pol Pot, the AIDS virus, sickle cell anaemia, Alzheimer’s, polio etc, etc), which requires adroit intellectual footwork 

This indeed is funny stuff. But, however agnostic/atheist I am, there is a seed of doubt. For a believer, there is the blanket of blind faith which covers for all questions; for non-believers on the other hand, there is no such prodigal blanket of faith. He needs to question the faith. And this requires some intellect, I am sure! Both religion and science depend on the irreducable primary. In the case of religion, this irreducable primary happens to be God and his infinite wisdom; for science it is the basic assumptions. For instance, the definition of one of the most basic units of measurement, the ‘metre’ is defined by an organization of standards as equal to 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the Krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.

Now, this is true all around the world. All physicists believe this and accept it to be true. But, it is not to deny the fact that it is an assigned value; an assumption made to standardize measurement. There is no way this can be refuted as being true, by comparing it with any other pre-existing standard. It is an irreducible primary. Similarly, for a believer, this irreducable primary is the infinite God.

Both sides of the coin are ‘believers’. One, in the infinite wisdom of the all knowing creator, the other in the most basic assumptions of measurement and time. Just as we agnostics might find it mind boggling that people believe in the ‘metaphysical flights of fancy’, but on ther other hand, the believers might find it hard to accept 1650763.73 wavelengths of Krypton-86 as a standard!

I think intellect is present on both camps; only we agnostics do not have faith to cushion our fall; hence we have more intellect! <wink> 

UPDATE:

It is almost fascinating (as if by intelligent design!!) that I came across an article in today’s edition of The American after writing this post, about the culture war between believers and non-believers. Peter J Wallison, in the article titled “Lets declare a truce in the culture war” argues on a similar premise that both the believer and the non-believer are basically unable to prove or falsify the other’s belief. To quote the author,

To the extent that they believe in the correctness of their own position, both sides are simply relying on faith. The only truly rational position is that of the agnostic, who says there is no way to know and probably never will be

I very much agree with what the author contends on this topic. All the rhetoric from both the believer and the non-believer about the correctness of his personal belief and more so the incorrectness of the other side is unfounded and wasteful. 

But, I am not very sure when he points out that Christopher Hitches was wrong in saying that the burden of proof is on the believer. Is it ever possible to prove the negative? How can a non believer like Hitchens be asked to prove the non existence of God? I do not completely accept the supposition that all atheists believe in the presence of multiple universes or multiverses. Some believe that there can be a state of absolute zero. Just like the believers can concieve in their thought process a being with ‘infinite’ powers and also claim that this ‘infinite’ is something which the human mind cannot comprehend, it is similarly possible for the non-believer to accept that absolute zero exists! And that in most scientific parlance can be ascertianed as a state of singularity.

I also strongly disagree on the ‘everything exists in the mind of the creator’ or ‘the objective reality we percieve around us is an illusion’ and that something exists ‘only when they have in some sense been observed’ theory. On the first instance, when the proof of the creator is itself under doubt, existence of reality only in his mind is also as much an illusory theory. In the second case, science may not as yet have reached a conclusive proof as to why the two photons that start out from the same place remain entangled even when they are miles apart, but this is not sufficent to declare that such an explanation will not be found and this in any sense implies the absence of reality in the absence of an observer! There are many things which people in the past found to be unexplained and supernatural, which are now well explained by rigorous scientific proof. The arguement that because something is unexplained scientifically today, it can act as proof for another connected hypothesis is a logical fallacy!

In retrospect, I think that this debate, like many other debates on similar topics, usually ends in one conclusion. Let each man decide for himself what is correct according to his system of knowledge, and that would be the most rational thing to do!