Do we really know?

If you cannot see, that may be taken as a fact but it does not, by the fact itself, prove anything. It should be the starting point for an investigation. Maybe you are blind. Maybe the light is being obstructed. Maybe you haven’t figured out how to open your eyes. It does not mean that no one else can see. And it certainly doesn’t prove there is no light. That would be a thoroughly irrational conclusion.

There are many possible causes of blindness. Some are organic, some traumatic. Not all blindness is permanent. If you yourself are obscuring the light, if you turn your back on the light, it is fairly straightforward optics that much of what you see will be your own shadow.

If someone else sees something you do not, that, too, may be taken as a fact or, perhaps, an hypothesis at least. And it should be the starting point of another investigation. An investigation that will be seriously hampered if it is assumed from the outset that one of you is wrong. Terminology such as “isn’t really there” and “I know what I saw” would have to be clearly defined.

Because a child has simplistic and easily ridiculed ideas of how electricity works is not proof there are no electrons. By a similar token, that person who cannot prove there is a God cannot prove there are electrons, either. The question becomes whether things are knowable without understanding.

The original definition of an atheist was “one who does not offer service to the public gods.” It was not considered possible not to believe in the gods. Everything that is sings God’s praise. You may think you don’t “believe” in science the way those other, erroneous, people “believe” in God, but the simple truth is you don’t know what you are talking about. Words always come out sounding like nonsense when we try to use them to speak of ineffable things. Not a one of us really knows how it is that anything is. Let us not be numbered among those who would extinguish the light with their mouths.

STANLEY G. JOHNSON

Little Rock