Expert: Vincent M. Wales - 7/16/2010

Question
Hi,

I am an atheist and I have no faith in any supernatural and non-materialistic forces or anything related to that. I only believe in things that are scientific and rational.
However, in last few days I found that the dream I saw while sleeping, actually came true in reality and that too on the same day. This has happened to me 2 times. These incidences have shaken the very foundation of the atheism in me and I am afraid that I may again start believing things, which I never want to.

Please help me by finding a rational solution to my problem.

Answer
Axe:

There are two basic ways I could answer this.  I'll start with the skeptical way.

Dreams are incredibly subjective things.  Unless you wrote the dream down upon waking, saving every exact moment in great detail, can you be sure that what you saw was REALLY what you dreamed, and not just similar to what you dreamed, with a bit of immediate revisionism going on?  Or maybe an interpretation of symbolism?  When it comes to our subconscious minds, there's no telling what's going on in there, really.  And there's always just coincidence.

And now, the more open-minded answer.

As Shakespeare wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."  We atheists don't pretend to know all the answers.  We're fully capable of admitting (and okay with admitting) that we just don't know certain things.  But just because we don't know them doesn't mean there's something supernatural at work, let alone "God."

Axe, I consider myself a skeptic.  But I'm not a total idiot about it.  Yes... weird things do happen.  And sometimes, there isn't a clear, rational explanation.  (Most of the time, there is, but not always.)  And I'm fine with thinking that MAYBE there are forces at work that go beyond what we're able to understand.  HOWEVER... it will take more (a LOT more) than a few unexplained things for me to buy into that.  Until there's an actual explanation for them, that's all they remain: unexplained.