This is another common argument in the “I don’t have enough
faith to be an atheist” line of criticism. The accusation is that since
atheists don’t believe in a God to perform all the creative acts that shaped
the universe, we must then just believe dogmatically in materialism as an
article of faith. That even if the current progress of the scientific community
has absolutely no earthly idea how something may have occurred naturally, we
just have to believe by assumption or presupposition that there is a natural
explanation.
Of course, it should come as no surprise that I disagree
with this accusation. While I’m sure there are some naturalists who believe in
naturalism through pure dogma (there are, after all, some irrational people in
every group), that is not the position I hold. The position I hold is that I
will not believe in the supernatural until I have reasonable evidence that it
is real. If we define “natural” as “anything that is not supernatural,” then
you don’t have to make a pledge to believe that the natural is all there is to
be a naturalist. All you need is to not believe in the supernatural. Just like
not believing in God is all it takes to be an atheist (without needing to make
any claims to know there is no God),
naturalism can be a “negative” belief (a lack of belief in something) rather
than a claim to definite certainty that the natural is all that exists.
Even so, modern science has provided us with many examples
of things that now have accepted natural explanation, which previously could
only be explained supernaturally. The diversity of living organisms on Earth is
probably the biggest example, but there are others, like disease, weather, and
planetary rotation. In times past, people have just accepted that there wasn’t
any natural explanation for any of these things, but now we know that there is.
So that gives a good inductive basis to expect that there might be further
natural explanation for other mysteries that are yet unsolved.
Though we have that good inductive reason to expect more natural explanations, we
still don’t need to assume them. In
the areas where we don’t have answers yet, many naturalists have no problem
saying, “we don’t know, and that’s okay.” As Michael Shermer put it, in
response to a claim that something could be not be explained through existing
scientific knowledge:
So what? The fact that we cannot
fully explain a mystery with natural means does not mean it requires a
supernatural explanation. It just means that we don’t know everything. Such
uncertainty is at the very heart of science and is what makes it such a
challenging enterprise.*
Let me clarify what I think he’s saying here, because I
suspect someone who is less sympathetic towards naturalism may well read this
quote and see it as some kind of admission that naturalists are completely
closed to any supernatural explanation no matter what. But notice, the issue at
play is simply that there’s no existing natural explanation for something.
There’s not even a claim being made that there’s actual evidence for a
supernatural explanation, just the lack of evidence for a natural one. This is
not a case where Shermer has been presented with clear evidence for the
supernatural and he still says “we don’t know” despite that. Rather, this is
yet another case where religious people act like a simple lack of natural
explanation means the supernatural explanation should be accepted by default.
With that in mind, what I think Shermer’s saying here is
that if there’s no evidence for a natural explanation, and no evidence for a
supernatural explanation, then it’s better to just accept that we don’t know,
instead of assuming a supernatural explanation so we can feel like we’ve closed
the gap in our knowledge.
This is quite contrary to the assertion that the naturalist
has to assume a natural explanation without any evidentiary foundation.
Shermer’s position here (which I believe is shared by many rationally-minded
atheists) is that it’s better to accept ignorance than believe a conclusion which
is completely without foundation. Religious people will toss out examples like
the origin of life or the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, and act like
the absence of a definite natural explanation means that atheists just believe
dogmatically by faith. On the contrary, I contend that it’s perfectly
reasonable, and demands no faith at all, to say “we don’t know what caused life
to emerge, but until you give me any actual evidence that it was God, I’m not
gonna believe that.” Because, if I did just assume it was God without any positive evidence (as opposed to the
“evidence” of simply not having any other explanation), then I would be living
dogmatically as a theist, not an atheist.
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