I am a skep­tic. Proudly. I treat all truth claims with an ele­ment of dis­trust — and many with dis­dain. But I am also a Chris­t­ian. And by def­i­n­i­tion a the­ist, and a believer in the super­nat­ural. My skep­ti­cism extends to all other reli­gious claims — and many claims made by sub­sets of Chris­tian­ity. What the rela­tion­ship is between Chris­t­ian belief and belief in the realm of ghosts, spir­i­tual war­fare and other super­nat­ural issues is a mat­ter for another post. Maybe.

I think I might have pre­vi­ously linked to this Clive James piece on the value of skep­ti­cism — if not, I apol­o­gise. It’s mostly about cli­mate change skep­ti­cism, though a lit­tle bit about golf ball chips (a phe­nom­ena that occurs if you have a golf course next to a potato farm).

Skep­ti­cism is great — but if you hold onto it counter to the evi­dence you’re not a skep­tic — you’re an idiot.

The golf-ball crisp might look like a crisp, and in a moment of delu­sion it might taste like a crisp, and you might even swal­low the whole thing, rather proud of the strength it took to chew. But if there is a weird after­taste, it might be time to ask your­self if you have not put too much value on your own opin­ion. The other way of say­ing “What do I know?” is “What do I know?” .

Which rather tan­gen­tially brings me to the pur­pose of this rant. I read this arti­cle on the Friendly Athe­ist about the rela­tion­ship between skep­ti­cism and athe­ism — obvi­ously they’re linked… it’s not rocket sci­ence to sug­gest that most athe­ists are skep­tics. It comes with the ter­ri­tory. But do all skep­tics have to be atheists?

A series of posts around the athe­ist blo­gos­phere sug­gested that the two are inex­tri­ca­bly linked — that athe­ism is a log­i­cal by prod­uct of skepticism.

• Why Skep­tics Don’t Have to be Atheists
• Why Skep­tics Should be Atheists
• One more on the rela­tion­ship between athe­ism and skep­ti­cism.

It started with a speech at a camp for skeptics…the speaker then had to defend his claim from some criticism…

But because I have yet to see good evi­dence — philo­soph­i­cal, sci­en­tific, or oth­er­wise — to sup­port reli­gious claims, I live under the assump­tion there is not a god or gods above,  mak­ing me an athe­ist. I am still open to evi­dence, just with rig­or­ous philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tific stan­dards. A per­fect exam­ple to sum up the co-existence of these labels comes from what Jacob posted in the com­ments to his piece. “You ask if I am agnos­tic about Zeus. Yes. Fairies. Yes.” But, then, Jacob is also an aZeu­sist, and an afairist. That is, he lives with­out belief in Zeus or fairies.

The prob­lem with all these asser­tions — and in fact every skep­ti­cal asser­tion — is that it is based on one’s per­sonal stan­dard of evi­dence. Which is a per­sonal deci­sion. And it should be. If you want to cover your eyes, block your ears and bury your head in the sand to avoid any “evi­dence” that may change your opin­ion on any mat­ter — then that is your choice. And I will laugh at love you even if you are wrong.

So, in the post on the Friendly Athe­ist the writer made this rather bold claim…

I’ll use ’skep­ti­cism’ to mean the atti­tude that one should scale con­fi­dence in a belief to match the evi­dence, and ‘athe­ism’ to mean the lack of belief in a god. With these def­i­n­i­tions, the two are clearly related.

Here’s another quote from that piece.

If a per­son is skep­ti­cal, we expect them to embrace athe­ism because that’s where the evi­dence leads.

Only when you set fairly nar­row para­me­ters for “evi­dence”… I think by “evi­dence” you mean that’s where an under­stand­ing of the world based on sci­en­tific nat­u­ral­ism leads.

For some of us sci­en­tific nat­u­ral­ism is a good start­ing point, but not an end point.

Since the prin­ci­ple of skep­ti­cism requires reli­gion to be treated with scrutiny, how should the move­ment deal with the fact that scrutiny leads to atheism?

What this post is actu­ally say­ing — and the root of the prob­lem — is that these athe­ists, who are skep­tics, have found the evi­dence want­ing when it comes to the ques­tion of God — but not all skep­tics have put the same faith in their par­tic­u­lar evi­den­tial methodology.

Here’s how I think those quotes could have been more hon­estly framed — from a skep­ti­cal stand­point — I’ll bold my changes.

If a per­son is skep­ti­cal, I expect them to embrace athe­ism because that’s where I think the evi­dence leads them.

Since the prin­ci­ple of skep­ti­cism requires reli­gion to be treated with scrutiny, how should I deal with my opin­ion that scrutiny leads to atheism?

Note the sim­i­lar­ity to the quote from Clive James’ piece — what do I know? That’s the ques­tion that should be being asked in this case. Skep­ti­cism is a sub­jec­tive philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion that requires con­vinc­ing evi­dence — not some sort of objec­tive standard.

For me, I am a skep­tic when it comes to sci­en­tific naturalism’s abil­ity to answer all of life’s ques­tions, and I am con­vinced by the evi­dence of God’s word, my obser­va­tions of human nature, and my expe­ri­ence as a believer.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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