Changing Your Mind: Alan Alda Converts from Atheism to Agnosticism

 
Alan Alda has changed his mind. He used to be an atheist but now he prefers to call himself an agnostic [ So far, I've changed my mind twice about God].

But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more: a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself.

The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of the wonderfully plainspoken words of Richard Feynman who felt it was better not to know than to know something that was wrong. The problem for me was that just as I couldn't find any evidence that there was a god, I couldn't find any that there wasn't a god. I would have to call myself an agnostic. At first, this seemed a little wimpy, but after a while I began to hope it might be an example of Feynman's heroic willingness to accept, even glory in, uncertainty.

I think he's dead wrong about the meaning of the word atheism. I think it means that you have not accepted theism and therefore you are "without a belief in God." I see the word atheism as similar to words like "a-toothfairyism" or "a-SantaClausism." You don't believe in Santa Claus so you are an "a-SantaClausist." It does not mean you are committed to the concept that there could not possibly be a Santa Claus.

It would be silly to label yourself an agnostic with respect to belief in Santa Claus. Nobody, especially Christians, goes around announcing that they are agnostic about the existence of the Greek Gods. You don't believe in them, full stop.

There is a version of agnosticism that's perfectly acceptable. John Wilkins, among others, promotes this definition of agnosticism. True agnostics claim that it is impossible to prove one way or the other whether God exists, just as it's impossible to prove one way or the other whether the tooth fairly exists. All rational people are agnostics in this sense. Some of them are also atheists. Alan Alda appears to be both an atheist and an agnostic, just like Richard Dawkins. Alan Alda is a wimp for letting non-atheists redefine atheism and then abandoning his position because of that incorrect definition.

It's not an either/or situation, in my opinion (Wilkins disagrees). You can, and should, be both an atheist and an agnostic.

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[Photo Credit: M*A*S*H]