Learning humility with thoughtful ignorance: living with doubt...

[Humanist_Activist]

This is me being self reflective and puzzled by someone's challenge/question in response to a post of mine about my atheism.

They asked what happened "before the Big Bang" and I told them that is a scientific question and I don't know.

Its a small matter, only tangential to this post, but it got me thinking, where did the idea that atheists are arrogant came from? I've read every well known atheists' ideas about their beliefs about god/s, and invariably the overwhelming majority simply don't see any evidence that one exists, so they don't believe one does, but always make their answers tentative, they don't know a god doesn't exist, they simply don't know.

Obviously this is agnostic atheism, whether its answerable in the future, we have no way to know at the moment. But I'm also thinking of things beyond this, for example, questions such as the origin of the universe, life, certain aspects of quantum and particle physics, the ultimate fate of the universe, dark matter, dark energy, etc.

But what is also something that goes hand in hand with this type of atheism is a healthy dose of skepticism and emphasis on critical thinking. I like to call this thoughtful ignorance, its being aware of your own personal limitations, and current limitations on human knowledge, acknowledging them, and being honest in our uncertainty, regardless of subject. The trick here is to exercise your critical thinking skills to examine all your beliefs and knowledge. It does no good to anyone to believe something is true that is not true, or to have unsupported suppositions about reality, society, or people.

What people seem to forget is that this is an active process, and even the best skeptics can fall victim to cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, presuppositions and prejudice. The most important target for critical thinking should be ourselves, we need to doubt ourselves, at all times, knowing that our perceptions can be easily skewed by previous experiences, disability, etc. We are easily fooled, and need a check on ourselves. This is perhaps why science, as a method, is so powerful, it is the only way we know about now that provides us with the mental tools to check against our own errors, using our peers. It is the only method where objective reality can be observed with any type of accuracy.

There's a peace to be found in uncertainty, in not knowing, as much or more so than knowing. Obviously the joy in figuring something out, or discovering some new(to you) piece of information is thrilling. But its always tempered with the knowledge that we will never, personally, know everything. And I'm ok with that.

[Lordquinton]

1. Arrogant, angry,

Take your pick. There are a whole slew of words used to reduce atheists from people to something at can be easily dismissed. And they are usually reflective. Somehow "i don't know" counts as arrogant, but "I just know god did it" isn't.

I've seen people say "atheists think they hold the key to enlightenment" when no, that's the exact opposite, religion thinks it's e sole path to enlightenment. Like you can only reach it by following their teachings, and only in the next world.

[Humanist_Activist]

2. Enlightenment is overrated, undefined and subjective....

I prefer to know than believe, its really as simple as that, but if I don't know, I'll say so. Its the honest thing to do, especially to ourselves. Besides that, if I don't know about something, its an opportunity to learn, and that is always a joy.

[Yorktown]

3. "There's a peace to be found in uncertainty"

I would dare to add there is also a peace to be found in some certainties and half certainties:

• Certainties: This universe is about 13.8 Bn years old, this planet about 4.6 Bn years old and our galaxy should hit and mesh with the Andromeda galaxy in about 2 Bn years while this universe will hit terminal heat death in 10^100 years.

Therefore some peace can be found in knowing we are specks of dust lost in eons of years that will keep no trace of us: let's do the most of what we've got.

• Half certainties: in the 10^22 solar systems of this universe, I like to think there are/will be other planets with other intelligent life forms. Making a mockery of the provincialism of the existing earthly 'holy' books.

Knowing we are stardust with emotions should push us to build a better world today.

So help us the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Peace and Parmigiano be upon it)

RAmen.

[Humanist_Activist]

4. None of those are 100% certain, and are, at best estimates....

Not to mention the details can matter as much as the big picture.

Uncertainty is knowing I won't know everything, but that doesn't mean I won't try to learn as much as I can before I die.

[Yorktown]

6. Well, quasi certainties

The ages of the universe and earth are known with degrees of confidence which are now reasonably narrow.

[struggle4progress]

5. I think the question "What happened before the Big Bang?" may be meaningless

I'm neither a cosmologist nor am I very competent in general relativity

But the "Big Bang" appears to be a singularity at which space-time seems contracted to a single point. I really don't know whether this is merely an artifact of coordinates we are artificially imposing or whether the current view is that space-time was genuinely collapsed there. But if the latter is the case, it's not really clear to me what "before the Big Bang" could possibly mean

[Yorktown]

7. What is interesting is the models of what could have been before the Big Bang and around

Multiverses? Can time be infinite? Does the Poincaré recurrence apply?

It might not be possible to know, but it might be possible to establish the different possible scenarios.