Atheism: Much easier than Confronting the…Truth

Critical thinking gives way to running for the hills

Pardon my disappointment. I thought there was a hopeful sign that an intelligent conversation with an intelligent skeptic was imminent.

Unfortunately, such is the content of the Billy Meier case; such is the power of the truth that even a self-professed, professional atheist doesn’t dare tangle with it.

Prof. Peter Boghossian’s an outspoken advocate of in-your-face missionizing to convert religious believers to atheism, which is in itself a very religious way of doing things. After contacting him and introducing the Meier case to him, I met him in person at a presentation of his, ironically at a church in Santa Monica. I had been led to believe we would have a recorded discussion of the Meier case in the near future. So it’s a little puzzling, and I would think embarrassing for him, that Prof. Boghossian bowed out rather hastily.

Perhaps Prof. Boghossian feared that he’d lose credibility, or be confronted with something that makes the atheists vs. believers battle look irrelevant – which certainly is the case. He seemed like a gutsy guy to me but maybe it’s only within his own comfort zone, which is true for a lot of people.

I think that he realized he was being confronted with something for which he had no reference point. He was presented with too much consistent evidence, and my confidence in it, that he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand, as most skeptics previously tried to do. They no longer can do that without looking like unscientific, prejudiced know-it-alls.

So Prof. Boghossian had to come up with something, since we were 10 days overdue on arranging the interview, as both he and his assistant had previously assured me would take place. I had waited those 10 days so as not to be too pushy. But when I recently wrote to the professor to suggest that we now make the necessary arrangements he told me that because I had contacted him he was…withdrawing. And, in his apparent hurry to get as far away from the unknown as fast as he could, he offered up a very lame  excuse, i.e. that he had told me not to contact him again…what? In fact, he had only asked that I not put him on any email lists, which of course I had honored.

Considering his own confrontational style he’s one of the last guys who I thought would just…wimp out. Perhaps he actually took the time to review the various links I sent him, not only to Meier’s authenticated physical evidence of actual extraterrestrial UFOs but also to the trouncing his fellow skeptics at IIG, etc., have received. Maybe he doesn’t want to lose face or funding, or his image as a take-no-prisoners kind of guy, especially to something so far outside of his own paradigm.

While I think he’s an intelligent guy, it looks to me like he’s running away from confronting something he fears just isn’t going to make him look good.

I’m going to reproduce Prof. Boghossian’s own very excellent core commitments here in the hope that he has the intellectual honesty, and courage, to apply them to himself regarding the matter at hand:

1) An understanding that the way to improve the human condition is through reason, rationality, and science. Consequently, the words “reason” and “hope” would be forever wedded, as would the words “faith” and “despair.”

2) The willingness to revise one’s beliefs.

3) Saying “I don’t know” when one doesn’t know.

Lastly, I again invite him to participate so that perhaps his own “I don’t know” can convert to…”Now I know”.

P.S. Here’s another recent interview of mine.

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Atheism: Much easier than Confronting the…Truth originally appeared on They Fly on January 31, 2014.