Thursday, May 19, 2005

atheism v agnostism

"Well, it helps to remember where you're seeing things from. In the words of my favourite quotation about storytelling, the basic question is :where do you put the camera? Where do you put the camera; where are you seeing it from? Now, it's possible to describe my own beliefs, for example, as being both atheist and agnostic, depending on where I put the camera. If I look at the total amount of things I know, and compare it with the things I don't know, the things I know constitute the tiniest possible, remote little speck of light in the middle of a great, vast encircling darkness; which is everything I don't know. And in all the things I don't know, there may be a God. There may be a God out there, but I don't know. However, when you move the camera, when you come in a bit and get closer to this little speck of light, it gets bigger and bigger, and finally spreads out beyond the edges of the vision and fills everything you can see. Here, I can see no evidence whatever for God. So on this level, I'm an atheist; further out, I'm an agnostic; depends on where you're standing." Philip Pullman