It's About Perspective

Arguing for or against the existence of god is funny. An atheist will say that the complexity of life is proof that there is no intelligence behind it, while a believer will use the same point to claim that there must be intelligence. I would like to make a quick point about arguments and how the same information can be used to back many different points of view. This can be a lesson in temperance, as evidence is convincing, but it is rarely as conclusive as we'd like think. Another way to look at it is as a lesson in uncertainty, as evidence only holds up as far as we can see, and no further. Consider this hastily prepared graph, which represents the evidence we have:

As you can see, the evidence clearly points to a logical, linear story that is very easy to understand. Also, it is very easy to draw conclusions from. Apply this to all the evidence you look for in, say, determining if your friend has a drug problem or if god exists. You can also think about it as your points in a debate. It all fits together so nicely.

Or does it?

I'd argue that this graph represents reality more than the one above it. With life taking many crazy turns, coincidences happen with regularity. More so if you're looking for them. Picking out the few points that appear to line up to aim in a certain direction seems like the wrong way to go about things. There is an entire body of silent evidence that is being ignored. It's like killing a whale for only its teeth. Then, another way that coincidental evidence plays with our heads is when we try to predict what comes next. We see these events all pointing in one direction and we mentally extend that line into the future... and then reality actually happens.

We have to be careful not to extrapolate too much information out of an empty scenario. On the other hand, what good is any knowledge if we cannot apply it and prepare? Many times, it is a futile exercise. Consider the sale of terrorism insurance after 9/11. Ignoring that life and property insurance already covers terrorism, the idea that terrorism would once again hit home, where even citizens were being scrutinized, was absurd. Rather, 9/11 fallout hit us where we were not looking at all; auto-related deaths increased as a result of fewer people using mass transportation. There is something about free will that those who possess it rarely grasp. It seems that the very act of predicting something almost guarantees that it will not happen. Is that god keeping us on our toes or is it simply an unadmitted lack of foresight? A cosmic carrot on a stick or a basic human imperfection?

This brings me to an idle curiosity that I hold about the authors that I read. I do not read about atheism, nor do I search for points that reinforce my current stance on the subject. I do, however, pause after each point I read and play with it in hypothetical scenarios. Most (perhaps all) of what I read seems to point toward the lack of an intelligent creator. My curiosity is if the authors I read share this idea or if they have taken the same points (that they themselves made) and use them to back their belief in a god. It could be that someone intelligent enough to write these books could at the least consider themselves agnostic - after all, science is about the search for knowledge, not the application of it (that's engineering). It might be safer to at least assume that the author was merely commenting on a small area of knowledge and is not comfortable with applying it to a broader concept. A knife used to cut metal should not be used to spread butter.