I'm with you, I think, in that I think his piece would suffer less had he not gotten into the semantics of whether or not he's an atheist or what label applies to him. Saying "I believe that there is no God" is, to me, saying that one is an atheist. But, leave semantics out of it and just say, "I believe that there is no God" and let people identify or not identify with you, despite how they would label such a position.
Believing there's no god doesn't rule out later admitting being wrong about god's non-existence if evidence surfaces. That depends on another unrelated personality dimension: one's readiness to acknowledge being wrong. There are both athiests and theists who would be hard-headed in sticking to their positions in light of strong evidence suggesting that they are wrong. Then there are others on the opposite end of the continuum, and I fall in this camp, who are easy with the morphing and discarding of what we are comfortable in claiming to "know" based on convincing information. I give Jillette the benefit of assuming he falls in the latter camp as well.
I agree with you that he's an entertainment genius. I think we see a persona he puts on like a glove, for us. I think we have no idea, really, whether or not the real man is flexible in changing his mind, but he did say in this essay "believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong". That statement does not rule out being convinced later that one is wrong and moving from believing there is no god to being personally certain that there is a god. I am giving that interpretation to his words, because I have nothing to convince me of a negative interpretation.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-21 10:46 am (UTC)Believing there's no god doesn't rule out later admitting being wrong about god's non-existence if evidence surfaces. That depends on another unrelated personality dimension: one's readiness to acknowledge being wrong. There are both athiests and theists who would be hard-headed in sticking to their positions in light of strong evidence suggesting that they are wrong. Then there are others on the opposite end of the continuum, and I fall in this camp, who are easy with the morphing and discarding of what we are comfortable in claiming to "know" based on convincing information. I give Jillette the benefit of assuming he falls in the latter camp as well.
I agree with you that he's an entertainment genius. I think we see a persona he puts on like a glove, for us. I think we have no idea, really, whether or not the real man is flexible in changing his mind, but he did say in this essay "believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong". That statement does not rule out being convinced later that one is wrong and moving from believing there is no god to being personally certain that there is a god. I am giving that interpretation to his words, because I have nothing to convince me of a negative interpretation.