Penn Jillette, the taller half of the award-winning magic duo Penn & Teller has a new book out called God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. At CNN.com, he explains why the simple statement "I don't know" is at the heart of both his atheism and his libertarianism:
What makes me libertarian is what makes me an atheist—I don't know. If I don't know, I don't believe. I don't know exactly how we got here, and I don't think anyone else does, either. We have some of the pieces of the puzzle and we'll get more, but I'm not going to use faith to fill in the gaps. I'm not going to believe things that TV hosts state without proof. I'll wait for real evidence and then I'll believe.
And I don't think anyone really knows how to help everyone. I don't even know what's best for me. Take my uncertainty about what's best for me and multiply that by every combination of the over 300 million people in the United States and I have no idea what the government should do.
President Obama sure looks and acts way smarter than me, but no one is 2 to the 300 millionth power times smarter than me. No one is even 2 to the 300 millionth times smarter than a squirrel. I sure don't know what to do about an AA+ rating and if we should live beyond our means and about compromise and sacrifice. I have no idea. I'm scared to death of being in debt. I was a street juggler and carny trash—I couldn't get my debt limit raised, I couldn't even get a debt limit—my only choice was to live within my means. That's all I understand from my experience, and that's not much.
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