Testing an atheist's faith

Ashok posted me a test for determining the trueness of an atheist.

It is on the blog: the Raving Atheist. The blog’s purpose is, ‘An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Belief: How Religious Devotion Trivializes American Law and Politics’.

A commendable goal, I would say.

However, the ‘test to determine whether someone is truly an atheist’ fails dramatically.

Here is an excerpt that prescribes the test from the blog…

<SNIP>
Ask your atheist to look up at the sky at night and say this out loud: “Hey God, you’re a [expletive]. Do me a favor and give my [wife, baby, mother, father, brother, sister, beloved friend] the most painful, lingering form of [brain cancer/leukemia/AIDS] imaginable and let me watch as they suffer and waste away. You [expletive] [expletive].”
</SNIP>

1. I am not an atheist but I passed the test.


2. Ashok is an atheist and he failed.


3. Ergo, the test failed!

How did this happen?

My position:

1. I am agnostic.


2. An agnostic claims that one cannot know for certain that god exists.


3. I used to fall between the stools of faith and true atheism when Thomas Henry Huxley came to the rescue.


4. Like me, the great biologist found that he was a, “man without a rag of a label to cover himself with”. Unlike me, he formalised his position by inventing a term that spoke his mind: Agnosticism.


5. René Descartes, a complicated friend from the 17th century, once told me that professing faith would be a good option for agnostics like Thomas and I. (The term ‘agnostic’ did not exist then, but René was always ahead of his time).


6. René argued that if I did profess faith, and if god exists, I am set for all eternity, else I am damned.


7. On the other hand, if god does not exist, I am cool.


8. So if I am unsure that god exists, I should quickly grab some faith from somewhere.


9. No René, I am not going to play your game of deception :-)


10. If René had lived to see the domino effect his ideas took by the time they reached my days he too would not have bothered with deception, I console myself. And in all fairness, let me stop ribbing the poor guy, after all his European neighbor, a guy called Galileo, was being condemned around that time.


11. So, I passed the test. Though I am not an atheist. And that is because I don’t care.


12. The test failed me.

Ashok’s position:

1. Ashok thinks god does not exist. He is an atheist.


2. He says that what is inexplicable by science today is assigned to god by many.


3. Ashok will not pass the test because he is squeamish.


4. The test does not take into account the human nature of squeamishness.


5. So the test fails Ashok instead.

I know Ashok for a long time now. And even those who know him for a lesser time can vouch for his intellectual honesty. I know he truly is an atheist if says he is one. But I also know that he is too sensitive to speak aloud even lesser horrors than those prescribed in the test.

Caution: Thomas Henry Huxley is not the Doubting Thomas. The doubting one was an apostle of Jesus.