atheists and agnostics aren’t skeptics.
At least that’s what this article:
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-05-020-f
has to say. It’s a lengthy read, but it’s very worthwhile. It talks a lot about the journey of Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century skeptic-turned-believer who was one of the first to look for proofs of God outside of the traditional Renaissance explanations. Here’s a quote by the author that I thought was particularly scathing but thought-provoking and, quite frankly, true:
All of the people who say that they are “atheists through skepticism, because they see no evidence that God exists,” are patently unthinking people, since by virtue of turning skeptic, no one has ever done anything—employed any logic, gathered any evidence, found any way forward—to reach a conclusion about whether God exists. So these atheists have not reached a conclusion; they have made a commitment.
What the scientific skeptic ought to say is this: “Having examined the hard evidence, we declare that route to be exhausted. The only kind of evidence for God’s existence that counts will have to be of some other kind—if there is any other kind.”
This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen an instance of someone taking a argument that atheists generally use (we’re skeptics, you’re not) and flipping it around. Another place I’ve seen it is when Christians, tired of being belittled as “intolerant,” flip it on their opponents and point out that they too are intolerant.
I’m not completely sold on the article, but it was a great read and I hope to retain some of it if I ever get labelled as narrow-minded for believing in Jesus.
