This past Monday my mother and I were driving home from Ames, Iowa. At one point we had a very brief exchange which in hindsight was the argument about the existence of supernatural beings in microcosm.

On the side of the road was a police car, which had just pulled someone over.

"That's what that cop came speeding by and scaring me half to death to do?"

"We saw that cop a long time ago," I responded. "You don't know that's the same one."

"You don't know it isn't."

"I never said it wasn't."

I'll just make my point very clear.

Theist: "God created the Universe."

Atheist: "You don't know that."

Theist: "You don't know that He didn't."

Atheist: "I never said that He didn't."

An atheist usually does not say, "God does not exist." Those who do make that claim likely haven't asked themselves how they know that. An atheist, by definition, states only one thing for sure: "I do not believe in a god." An atheist who argues his or her point with a theist will usually also say, "Your belief in your god is unreasonable and indefensible." I can not imagine how this argument in any way fails unless, like so many seem to, you hold that belief and truth should not necessarily tend to correlate. Notice that I included the word "should" in that sentence, indicating that one's efforts should be toward causing one's own beliefs to correlate with truth (not necessarily that should somehow simply be true), which would involve modifying beliefs that are found not to be identical to the truth (all of them really).

I'd like to explain myself in another way. It seems that many people think that every statement is a matter of opinion. I recall learning the difference between fact statements and opinion statements in kindergarten. I know it wasn't first grade because I remember that my first grade classroom didn't have carpeting and I doubt it was in second grade, because my memories of second grade are usually tied to excitement about going to the "big kid" sections of the library and being obsessed with the color wheel.

"This tree is beautiful," is an opinion statement. You can disagree about that one without the need to support your point of view. More simply, your point of view can't be wrong.

"This tree is twenty feet tall," is a fact statement. Your point of view can be wrong. The tree can be twenty-five feet and eight inches tall or it could be eighteen feet and two inches tall.

"These blueberries are delicious." Can you identify whether that is a fact statement or an opinion statement?

Let's try another. "Badgers have many teeth." Is this a statement subject to verification or not?

How about this one: "God exists." Is that an opinion statement? No. This would be an opinion statement: "God is neat," or the more common, "God is good." For the record, God can be good and not exist at the same time, just like Superman.

Now, we've just shown that God's existence is not a mere matter of opinion but a factual claim. Not everyone gets to be right. That means it should be subject to verification; it must be either true or false, regardless of belief. Having grown up Mormon, I have experience with one argument that God's existence is subject to verification. The Mormons would claim that one can know whether God exists by a feeling one gets when thinking about Him. But the challenge, "How do you know that this feeling means what you claim it means?" is never met with worthwhile answers. The little theist inside of me, who is really just a remembered way of thinking, continues to point to "the Spirit" and asks for an explanation. More specifically, he argues that the Spirit is felt only under certain circumstances, such as during church, when reading the scriptures, praying, or visiting the temple. This was my final scrap of evidence and final argument for the truth of the Church. It ultimately fell to pieces when I realized the feeling was only a feeling. It was an emotion like any another, which might simply be a product of the brain, elicited in response to certain stimuli. I might even have learned to experience it in response only to specific stimuli. I could then relearn to experience it under other circumstances. Being unable to refocus my spirituality would have been an indication that the church were true, but no certain proof.

But I've skipped a point. When I was fourteen years old, shortly after I realized that I had "homosexual tendencies", I would spend hours praying long and hard for guidance in dealing with them, with the aim of eventually overcoming them so I could live out my life according to God's plan. Even in the depth of my belief, however, there came a point where I had to succumb to the feeling that I was only speaking to my imagination -- to myself. If the feeling felt during prayer were an actual communion with another consciousness, then, with stillness, perceptivity, an open mind, an open heart, and a pure desire to know, I should have been able to identify the subtle differences between my own thoughts and the thoughts coming in from outside of my own consciousness. Over time it became apparent God had no interest in making it any clearer that He was communicating with me. He had already had my faith and devotion. I was only asking for some experience that extended beyond my own imagination. Most importantly, I was asking for some way to distinguish between His desires and my own.

But religious belief tends to have self-preservation mechanisms. That I could not distinguish between God's wishes and my own may still have been explainable in many ways, and probably in ways that I couldn't even think of at the time. It would have been arrogant to assume I had uncovered the whole story by myself already (and as a teenager). So the matter, for the next few years, would have to rest on the net of faith. The Church was True because the Church was True because the Church was True.

Faith. This gets us to the heart of the entire problem. Lacking arguments in their defense theists of all varieties must ultimately resort to the concept of faith. The problem here is now epistemological. The religious would claim that knowledge may be obtained through faith, but, apparently, only the kind of knowledge that can not be obtained by the usual methods. Sometimes they will go so far as to claim that knowledge obtainable through the usual methods may be obtained through faith -- and that faith wins. Well, I have a hard time accepting this claim in the slightest. I never could accept it once I realized that one could have faith in anything. Rather, when I realized that non-Mormons believed what they believed just as strongly as Mormons did. How could you possibly know the difference? Would you argue that it doesn't matter? Of course not. Of course it matters, unless you disagree that belief should tend to correlate with the truth. Faith is belief and has only ever been just belief. It is not discovery.

I want to believe true things and I do not want to believe false things. This means that I can not say, "It is true," unless I can explain to you why it is so. If you can explain to me, convincingly, why it is not so then I would have to say, "It is false." But here is the most important part, which tends to get left out of many discussions: If I can not say that it is true and you can not convince me that it is not, does that mean that I still get to say that it is? No. The truth is that I don't know.

Let's say this again, but I'll make it very clear.

Question: "Does God exist?"

Answer: "I do not know."

This means that it would be dishonest to believe that He does. It would also be dishonest to believe that He does not. An honest position is to say, "If He exists then He has not shown Himself to us." Or, perhaps, that He has shown himself to us in so many different ways that it becomes well beyond absurd to claim He cares if you believe in any specific conception of Him, or whether you believe at all.

At the very least, for myself, I can say that God has made it clear to me, perhaps through a failure to exist, that He has no interest in my life and would prefer to be left alone.

Alright. Time to review the last few weeks or so, starting with Pride.

We managed to get the twenty-fourth off of work. People worked our shifts for us. That allowed us to go to Pride, which was a lot of fun. Friday night, we spent the night at David's, and I read the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which I had bought that day. Then there was the parade, but the majority of it was just spending time with friends. Paul and I split up, which was refreshing. It's an important part of any relationship to spend some time apart. Our living and working together gave us very little of that. I spent most of the time with David, Chuck, Keith, Mike, and Robbie, whom I'd met that day, apparently just so that I could say that I could add a fourth Rob to my list of Robs. Not too much worth mention, but much fun. Paul spent time with Abby, Morgan, Shannyn, Randy, Marcus, Roman, and all of them. That night, just before we were to go to sleep, Paul's friend Matt/Karl called, informing us that he was stranded. So we drove up to Hilliard to pick him up, then drove back downtown, then went back to David's. The next day we went to Keith's party for Pride, Heidi's going away, and Andrew's birthday. I suppose I could call him Andrew II. Heidi is Andrew I's dog, who, the next morning, had seven sets of entirely new seizures. She had to be put down and now has a memorial in David's apartment where she used to sleep. At Keith's, Paul had a long conversation with Andrew II about first Cedar Point, then starting some sort of business in the food industry which would utilize their two areas of expertise. It bored me, so I wasn't paying much attention to what exactly this business would be. Afterwards, Paul went to Havana, then Union, and got very drunk. I went to David's. Paul called me and told me to come to Union so he could give me a flower. He was quite drunk at this point, so I went back to David's. The next day was Heidi's last... and Courtney's birthday. Courtney is Paul's sister. So we went to his parents', his dad gave us a bunch of stuff, including a big painting that now hangs on our bedroom wall, then went home and called Marcus, who was supposed to come over that night, and who never called us back. We have yet to hear from him. The next day was Tuesday. At work, a supervisor came by and told him to get up and give the headset to him so he could finish the call. Apparently, this because it was very urgent to fire him. Their reason for firing him was rather silly, and the way that they went about doing it was even sillier. So I spent the next week going to work by myself, which changes the whole experience. I am, of course, quite stressed about the fact that our income has been cut in half. Sunday, we went to the Delaware lake with Rob and his family, Roman, Abby, and Morgan. Much enjoyment. Afterwards, and after the rain, Paul, Rob, his nephew, his son, and I went fishing. I didn't have my fishing lisence, and little Rob had already lost his dad's eighty-dollar, indestructible pole, so neither of us could fish. After about two hours, and that first big fight between a huge fish (turtle) and Rob, the boys and I were growing tired, so I drove them home. Just before I left, Paul told me that he'd see us in an hour or two. I figured that that was enough time for John and me to finish our huge game of Heroclix. We didn't actually finish it, because I was too tired to continue. Little Rob had fallen asleep in my bed, so the only place to sleep was on the couch, which wasn't very comfortable, and the sun had begun to come up and the birds were chirping, and I had tried to call Paul a few times and got no answer, so I sat up for four hours, waiting for him, attempting to call him, and failing to reach him. Of course, that led to dark imaginings and much worry. I could not sleep. Even when Paul and Rob came home and little Rob went home, I lay in bed, staring at the wall. The next day, I made some coffee and sat down with a cigarette, then little Rob came running in, telling us to wake up because there was a tornado coming. So I went down to Rob's and saw that there was, in fact, a huge storm coming, and tornado warnings in effect. So I played heroclix with John until the storm blew over, then went down to Red White and Boom with David and Chuck. Fireworks are fun. Afterwards, we watched an absolutely brilliant, somewhat disturbing movie called The Mudge Boy. I then went home and cursed the fact that I have to work today.

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