Living in poverty

Richard Dawkins has already managed to annoy me in The God Delusion. His first chapter covers, among other things, “the poverty of agnosticism.” He distinguishes between the kind of agnostic who says, “I don’t know, but when the facts are in I will,” from the kind who says, “I don’t know and there is no way to know,” but he condemns the latter as wishy-washy fence-riding. Although now that I write that, it actually makes sense. That’s annoying too.

His point is that the existence of God is something that can be proven or disproven scientifically, and that therefore the question of God’s existence should not be reserved to the theologians and denied to the scientists. He asks why scientists shouldn’t be allowed to hold forth on this question, since their business is the nature of the universe and obviously, whether the universe contains a God is an important question about its nature.

It’s an okay read so far, and he’s asking questions that require pondering about normally accepted givens. That’s the kind of book I like – the kind that stretches my tiny agnostic brain and makes it do jumping-jacks. More as it becomes relevant.