Atheists and Aliens.

As indicated by my previous post, I am now a tin foil hat wearing UFO conspiracy theorist (the foil is to stop the aliens from frying my brain with their mad mind control skillz). Last night I was listening to Late Night Live which was a lecture by Michel Onfrey, the author of the Atheist Manifesto. While answering a question from an audience member, he claimed that Atheists can not believe in UFOs. That doesn't seem right to me.

If that is the case, wouldn't Atheism be just as ignorant as Christianity or another religion? It would seem so to me. There seems to me to be at the very least some evidence to support the existence of life outside this planet. Now, part of Atheism is denouncing the notion that human beings are privileged in some astronomical or spiritual way. In other words, we are meat and bones brought about through slow and gradual evolution. That I agree with. But if you say that we are the only life in the whole freakin universe, doesn't that indicate some privilege?

I think what Michel is describing could be called fundamentalist Atheism. Something which he explicitly stated he was not advocating in a following question. Needless to say, fundamentalist anything is a bad doctrine to subscribe to. I don't believe in God because of a decisive lack of evidence. As much as I detest religion, if evidence was provided that verified it I would be forced to believe, but I would still detest it.

I sat, thought and made my mind up on the issue based on experience and reason. Some call that Agnosticism. It's a fine line, but I don't see it the same. I have made a decision, but am not so fucking ignorant to revise that decision if presented with something that either contradicts my version of truth or is an aspect that I hadn't considered. Anything else is fundamentalist in my opinion.

For whatever reason (Yahweh or some other fairy tale creature blessed us with it I suppose) we have the ability to postulate. Best we take advantage of that. Any ideology not devoted to reason, evidence and knowledge is flawed. Even if it's primary argument is the lack of those qualities in opposing ideologies.