I have been noticing, lately, how often and stridently most of the atheists that come here dislike the idea that they are being denied knowledge. It seems that no matter what someone else's opinion might be on whatever subject, they will demand to know how the other person presumes to know this. Even though the other person was only offering an opinion, and was not necessarily presuming or claiming to know anything. And in fact most of the atheists here base their atheism almost entirely on the idea that they cannot KNOW that God exists, and because they can't know it, they resent and reject the whole proposition.
I see this all the time in their constant demands for "evidence" (which for them means proof) and I am realizing that what they are really demanding is a way to KNOW that what someone else is proposing, is correct. They equate knowing with correctness, and not knowing with incorrectness. Thus, not knowing that God exists means that God's existing is incorrect.
Until now, I have been thinking that this obsession with "evidence" was just blind egotism. And I nick-named it the "kangaroo court" syndrome. Wherein the ego drives the mind to see itself as the indisputable judge of every other mind it encounters. And of course it bases all it's judgments on the presumption of it's on righteousness. Like the judge in a "kangaroo court".
And this was not an entirely wrong presumption on my part.
But it was not entirely a right presumption, either. As I am now realizing that this phenomena is not just an ego manifestation. It's also a manifestation of the idea that knowledge = truth (or at least ascertains 'correctness'). And those who are constantly demanding "evidence" (proof) are really demanding the knowledge that will allow them to accept whatever they are hearing from someone else as being correct (and therefor, true).
Knowledge, for them, is the currency of reality and of truth.
And yet I am not among them in this pursuit. So am I against knowledge, and truth?
No, but I do not believe, think, or feel that knowledge is the currency of reality or truth. I think WISDOM is. And wisdom does not come primarily from knowledge. Wisdom comes from experience and applied intelligence. Wisdom doesn't come from the facts, or the evidence, or the biggest data base and the strictest adherence to logic. Wisdom comes from how clearly we can we 'see' all that data and how creatively and adeptly we can assemble it, and disassemble it, and reassemble it differently, as needed. Knowledge is practical, but wisdom is 'meta-practical'. Wisdom IS 'meta'. It exists beyond the "evidence" and the "proof" and our pretensions of 'correctness'.
So I apologize to all those atheists for my presuming they were simply succumbed to their own intellectual egos. As I can now see that what they have succumbed to is the idea that knowledge = correctness, and correctness = reality/truth.
It's not that they are wrong about this. It's that they are chasing after the wrong Grail.