Evidencing Absence

THE FACEBOOK POST said: "The best evidence that God does not exist is the lack of evidence that he does". Or maybe there is no such lack of evidence. Perhaps every particle of matter and every quanta of energy in the universe is not only evidence, but proof that God exists, and that we humans are like fish in water; so immersed in our environment that, as we say, we cannot see the forest for the trees. There is only one reasonable system of belief: agnosticism. In truth, we are all agnostics, whether we acknowledge it, because, as Einstein said: "We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything". There is nothing as predicatble as that whatever people choose to believe, they believe with great certitude, leaving no doubt in their opinions. As Goethe said: "We are united by sentiment, sundered by opinion". Those who believe in God are uniformly unwilling to accept even the remote possibility that their faith is mistaken. This principle widely adheres. Consider the people who insist that the election was stolen from Trump. We never hear any of them say that "I suspect the election might have been stolen", or, "I consider it possible, even probable that the election was stolen". Rarely if ever do we hear them express the slightest doubt, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting the accusation. The same holds true with climate change deniers, and conspiracy theorists generally. The less evidence, the more certainty. Lacking evidence to support our assertions, unwilling to abandon our fondest beliefs, we abandon reason, and resort to faith, as of a religion. We lack hummility, and replace it with our arrogance of certainty. Again, Goethe: "Every need and desire denied fulfillment is of necessity constrained to faith". In essence, what we want but do not have we invent by simply beieving in its existence. Thus did our remote ancestors invent religions, and, as Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent my own". Einstein was certain that "God" exists, because he perceived God in the orderly harmonious functioning of nature, like the pantheist Spinoza. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is pointless", he said, paraphrased. And also: "My religiousity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we can comprehend of reality." Ultimately, we can be certain only that we can be certain about little or nothing.