by Caroline Garlick

Created on: July 10, 2010

The poster in Fox Mulder's basement office always intrigued me. "I Want To Believe", it proclaimed, over a blurry photograph of a hovering UFO. Well, I wondered to myself, if you want to believe, why don't you just believe? Upon consideration, I would suggest that perhaps the reason one may feel faced with a choice between believing and not believing is because there is an element of doubt surrounding the premise. And logically, if you doubt the premise in any way, then already you do not truly believe it. You've answered your own question.

The theist does not choose to believe in God, and neither does the atheist choose not to; they either believe, or they don't. The very suggestion that there is a choice to be made implies uncertainty, and who ever heard of an uncertain atheist, or for that matter, an uncertain Christian, Muslim, or Sikh? By being unsure of what to believe, one is already outside the defining parameters of that particular group, whether religious or not.

Of course, in some cases religion (or indeed atheism) is found later in life when a person experiences some kind of life-affirming event which sways them in one direction or another, but to interpret such an event in the context of religion (or non-religion) would suggest that the seeds were already sown beforehand. Take the hypothetical example of someone who has never heard of the Christian God, and has never been introduced to the concept of heaven and the associated imagery. When she is hit by a bus whilst crossing the road, and, before being revived by a paramedic, witnesses a host of winged people playing harps at a set of magnificent pearly gates, does she immediately proclaim "Hallelujah, He exists!" upon awakening? No, because she had no preconception upon which to draw this conclusion. The oxymoronic "uncertain atheist", however, already doubts his prior conviction (he must, otherwise he would not have been faced with a decision in the first place), so from his perspective such an experience is enough to confirm a new-found belief in all things holy. Even then, he has still not "chosen" to believe; now that he has seen such provocative imagery, he just believes.         

Given that it is illogical to choose a belief, many of those who fall into the "uncertain" category consider themselves agnostic. Like Agent Mulder on the subject of extraterrestrial intelligence, they've often followed a line of reasoning which states, "I'd like to believe in God, but in the absence of solid evidence one way or another, I reserve judgement." Presumably, then, when some concrete proof of God's existence arises, the agnostic will happily make his "choice" on the side of belief. However, I submit that, if said existence is proven beyond doubt with hard evidence, then there is no longer any requirement for belief. I don't "believe" that one plus one equals two, because I know it to be the case. The agnostic, converted to religion in the presence of undeniable facts, is not just believing in God - instead, he now knows that God exists. He did not actually have any choice in the matter at all.

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