Julian Sanchez Does Good Work

Sanchez is a libertarian writer for the Cato Institute who also happens to keep a blog. In a recent post he addresses Ron Rosenbaum's essay in Slate that raises the tired argument that atheists are just as reliant on faith as theists are. It's bullshit, of course, but it can be frustrating to discuss. Enter Julian Sanchez, who writes:

The real argument is a variant on the familiar point that, of course, you can’t prove with mathematical certainty that there isn’t a God, supposedly making atheism (at least) as unsupportable a position as theism. But then, are there many self-identified atheists who would really pretend to such apodictic certainty? Believers sometimes claim proudly to have access to some kind of special revelation that obliterates the possibility of error. But when I say that I think there is no God, I don’t mean anything so grandiose. I mean just that I see no good reason to think that there is, and that all the various stories told about deities appear to me equally likely to be mythical. I don’t believe in basilisks or psychic powers either—probably neither do most religious believers—but few of us, on reflection, would be so bold as to say this is a belief we are absolutely certain about. It’s possible we could be mistaken, even if the possibility seems too remote to bother much about or, indeed, take all that seriously.

Read the whole thing. It's good stuff.