Doubt vs Certainty
The debate between religion and atheism, leads Nick Margerrison to question what "is".
27 Feb 2012, 09:00
Dawkins: I'm Not An Atheist
Richard Dawkins’s ‘revelation’ that he is in fact an agnostic as opposed to an atheist continues to send shockwaves around the internet. It came last week during a debate with Dr Rowan Williams, The Archbishiop Of Canterbury, at The Oxford Union. It’s not much of a revelation given that it’s a position he outlines clearly in his book ‘The God Delusion,’ but such is the nature of polemics. Opposing something often associates you with the thing you oppose, as was neatly summed up by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: "Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one". Dawkins has inevitably started to appear a little like the dogmatic religious mindset he started out by attacking when he moved away from simply writing brilliant books about evolution.
What is interesting about this ‘controversy’ is that it sets up a useful division between those who would like the world to be certain and others who prefer remembering the power of skepticism. Dawkins’s non-spiritual forefather in ‘The High Church of Atheism’, Carl Sagan, once famously said, “it pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out”. Dawkins is delivering on the first part of that quote by reminding us what the debate between religion and science is all about. It’s a battle between doubt and certainty. The scientific community awaits new evidence and looks forward to changing its mind, the religious community cannot afford to do the same. They require the certainty of faith, science rejects such a notion.
I recently saw a poster for a small production of the Shakespeare play it called "Much Ado About Nothing?". The company had taken a controversial decision to add a question mark to the title of the play. It made The Great Bard seem as though he had that annoying vocal tick which some people have where their voice goes up at the end of each sentence like they’re asking a question. I had a couple of flat mates like that at university. It drove me round the bend even though they were lovely people?
My brain couldn't help but dwell on this poster as I walked into town. It made me think of one of my favorite philosophers, Robert Anton Wilson, an advocate of the abolition of the word “is”. He believed writing and thinking should be done in what is called E-Prime, where “is” and other derivatives of the verb "to be" are erased from your vocabulary. The aim being to free people from dogmatic thinking and remind them that no one actually knows anything about what the world “is” but only how it appears to be, to them, at that particular moment. Most of Wilson's later work doesn't feature the word "is" at all and he occasionally claimed not to use it in speech either.
The Shakespeare poster got drawn into my internal monologue as I was thinking about this recently. I accept the premise, that there is no use of the word “is” which isn’t suspect. Even then, in that sentence, the word was a bit dodgy so I’ll rephrase it: I accept the premise that, it appears to me that any use of the word “is” feels suspect. I don’t think I can ever say what “is,” I can only say what appears to be the case, to me, in any particular moment.
However eradicating the word “is,” I don’t think, is the answer. It's too unwieldy and tricky for me to un-learn old habits like that. Furthermore it's not essentially the point. Instead, all sentences could be re-written with a “?” instead of a full stop? That way perhaps people will know we’re not sure about anything ever but only expressing an opinion that we invite them to challenge? In other words the dialogue implicit in all verbal communication will be made explicit? What an appropriate direction for language to take in the online world of comments and instant feedback?
I don’t think in the long run that this idea will work? Then again neither will everyone adopt E-Prime will they? Although I also suspect I will not add question marks to the end of every sentence after writing this blog entry I think the point is made? You do not know how the world is? You only know how it appears to be, to you, in that particular moment?
Comments (1)
Subscribe to this posts's comments feed
All those question marks have made my brain hurt.
I like certainty.
Besides which, empirical states, described with certainty by the use of the word 'is', do exist. Science proves things with certainty all the time. Also uncertainty exists as well. People determine what falls into each category by the nature of the 'meme' that something belongs to (urgh, I just used a Dawkins-inspired made-up word there, I feel dirty). We self-regulate instinctively through our perception of language as applied to our intrinsic belief system.
27/02/2012 10:18