Are there intelligent beings, perhaps far more advanced than us, on other worlds scattered through the vastness of the universe? It is possible to construct reasoned arguments to support both positive and negative answers to this question. The one thing that cannot be stated categorically one way or the other is absolute certainty.
Certainty can be a dangerous concept, too often founded on an absolutist partial view. To be certain is to accept no contradiction, all contrary views must be summarily dismissed as erroneous.
Is there God? In Britain it has become the prevailing trend amongst those who would consider themselves to be most progressive and rational in their thinking to become unholier than thou. God of the gaps has become no gap for God.
Non-belief in God is perfectly rational, a reasoned conclusion drawn from some combination of scientific understanding with all too many execrable examples of religious dogmatism or malpractice.
Atheism, though, does not confer secular sainthood on its adherents. Atheists are as capable of all the foibles that too often are considered the failings of the religious. The uncomfortable truth is that such failings, from the trivial to the horrendous, are human, not God’s.
God is often cited to justify truly terrible acts committed by those claiming to be His most pious adherents. Whether they sincerely believe this or not their justification is a human falsehood, the crimes are theirs.
This is also the case for religious practices and books. They are human productions, not divinely ordained. Therefore they cannot be cited to justify persecution of those considered non-believers or claim a monopoly on truth.
Atheists who readily cite such religious malfeasance are conniving at the pious fallacy. False belief remains just that whether dressed in religious garb or sporting a secular appearance. Both are guilty of closed thinking if they profess absolute certainty in their ideology.
Deism begins with the view that all ideologies, religious or secular, are manmade, including its own. Therefore, an ideology at any given moment is provisional and will change over time, and may be supplanted at some future date when it has been falsified by new understandings.
The argument for God or Deus that deists profess is based on the application of human reason. Science provides an expanding knowledge of the universe, which is only possible because it operates according to discernible laws.
If creation was the product of just random chance then there would only be chaos, certainly none of the predictability science requires to function. Deists argue that universal laws rather than chaos are at the very least suggestive of something that can be referred to as God or Deus or First Cause or perhaps even X.
This is not certain, but it is a recognition that the age old belief in deity, expressed in such varied ways over millennia, is perhaps an a priori feature of human cognition. That it gets bound up in sectarian religious practices is a reflection of a desire for certainty about something which is ultimately beyond human comprehension.
It is far, far more likely that the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial advanced beings will at some point be possible than some absolute proof of God. However, inquiry should not be dismissed or even curtailed by a present insistence on an absolute certainty.
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