Everyone believes something. Being an agnostic atheist just means I don’t believe in a god. My underlying principle is to assume as little as possible.

1. I Believe That I Exist

This is fundamental. I assume I’m an actual, physical human being, interacting with an actual, physical universe. In other words, I am not a figment of someone else’s imagination, and the rest of the universe is not a figment of my imagination.

This is a direct rejection of metaphysical solipsism.

I have to take this much on faith; there is no way to prove I’m correct. However, no one can argue against this belief; if they do, they’re admitting to being a figment of my imagination.

2. I Believe What I Can Sense, Within Reason

Obviously senses can be fooled — optical illusions, for example — but I take that into account when I say that I believe what I can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. I believe it’s getting colder when my body feels like it’s getting colder, though I again I take into account that this sense can be fooled by relative humidity and air movement.

Empirical evidence can override the illusions: thermometers, photographs, audio-visual recordings, etc.

3. Knowing More Is Better Than Knowing Less

Even if the newly-gained knowledge is upsetting, it is better to know than to not know. It’s also important to constantly evaluate knowledge for accuracy and truthfulness.

Information — and its sources — should be judged carefully. Not all sources of information are equally reliable. Not all information has the same value.

4. ‘I Don’t Know’ Is Better Than ‘I Assume’

When something cannot be known, or at least cannot be known presently, I would rather say “I don’t know” than make a baseless assumption. An educated guess is not the same thing as an assumption.

5. I Believe In The Principles Of Science

Science is the natural outgrowth of 1-4 above. Science is from the Latin for “knowledge”. In its simplest form, science is the gathering and organization of knowledge, via observation, forming hypotheses, and performing experiments. Unlike religion, science demands evidence. Perhaps more than any other endeavor, science attempts to avoid bias — in fact, it actively searches out bias in order to remove it.

To some extent, all of us are scientists, and have been since we were born. Infants arrive in the world without assumption or bias, make observations, formulate hypotheses, perform experiments, observe the results, and formulate new hypotheses — until they can understand the world. Some of us kept doing that as we grew older; others of us arrived at a basic set of assumptions and then ceased thinking scientifically.

When given the choice between trusting an assertion based on assumptions or trusting an assertion based on scientific inquiry, I will always choose the latter.

6. Every Opinion (Belief, Stance, Theory, etc.) Should Be Challenged

Until an idea has been put to the test, I should not hold it dearly. This is part of the scientific mindset. The more important an idea is to me, and the longer I go without testing it, the harder it is to let go if proven incorrect. If I have an opinion on something, I want to know why I have it.

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