Agnosticism: The Argument
Skepdude recently commented on my article outlining the awareness I think needs to be raised over the true meanings of agnosticism. I feel his points deserved slightly more discussion and dissection than a simple comments thread, so here they are:
Ok, first of all I think you’re making an overly broad generalization when you define atheism as a stance which proclaims either to know or believe that there is no God. I consider myself an atheist, among other things, but I don’t use either “know” or “believe”.
I stated in the article “That is a generalization” in respect to my definitions. I also made sure not to mention atheism as a belief, which it isn’t. Atheism is a disbelief, as defined by the dictionaries. Whether or not you use the words “know” or “believe” personally, the definitions of atheism all rely on a disbelief of gods.
I rely on the lack of evidence to come to the conclusion that such lack of evidence makes the probability of God’s existence very, very very tiny, next to zero. Until further convincing evidence is presented the only logical position is to say that very likely there is no God. This is not a matter of belief nor is it knowledge. It’s simple statistics.
Forgetting the fact that statistics is a branch of science, science being a branch of knowledge, knowledge being a branch of belief…oh wait, you are talking about belief and knowledge. In fact, your admittance that the probability of God’s existence is “very, very, very tiny, next to zero” makes you an agnostic atheist whether you like the label or not.
The problem with your statistical analysis of God is you do not have a good basis for describing evidence that counts. There is no direct evidence of God, as he has never appeared before us personally and said “hey, I’m God”. Theists argue that the entire universe (as a whole, not as separate objects) is the evidence of a God. Your statistical analysis, whilst useful from a atheistic philosophical perspective, is bias as such. When we do a statistical analysis of the number and types of car traveling on a road, we know the description of the data we are collecting. We can distinguish between person and car, and different types of car. If a motorbike came along, there might be some arguing over whether it should be included, but overall we have a full data set. With the idea of God being so incomplete as it is, and such a being existing outside observation, we can never be certain of what constitutes relevant data and what doesn’t.
As far as agnosticism is concerned, regardless of how you define it, I find it to be a lazy position.
This is the point of the article. We shouldn’t go along with personal opinions of what words mean, but rather their actual definitions. I could say I find the word “nigger” to be offensive to blacks, but that doesn’t remove it’s historical position as a word to describe blacks. My personal feelings over a word doesn’t change the definition of it.
Why can’t we know about God, given how God is described by the major religions? Why would a God who’s always meddling in this universe and performing miracles and such not be provable? Of course we can know about God, as long as he is supposed to have some sort of direct effect on our reality, he or she is than well within the realms of science. Science and religion are not two separate magisteria ( I think I just butchered that word).
Which is why we should carefully explain the kind of God we are being agnostic about. We are agnostic about the God who supposedly exists outside the realms of the observable universe. Why would a God who is performing miracles not be provable? Well, perhaps such a being made sure that his miracles, however highly unlikely, always had a basis in the natural world? By saying we are agnostic atheists, we are saying that we do not believe in gods, but at the end of the day, we cannot know about something that has been supposedly placed outside our observable universe, even if such a being acts on the observable universe.
Suppose you lived in a 20m by 20m box, without any way of knowing what is outside the box. The box is your observable universe, since you have no knowledge of what lays outside it. Every night, whilst you sleep, someone takes the lid off the box, and places food for you to eat. You never see them because whoever does this makes sure that you are completely unconscious whilst they do it. You could could either deduce that the appearance of the fruit was a natural occurrence to your universe, or that some “God” was doing it. Even if you had no evidence to suggest otherwise, the proposition needs agnosticism to state “perhaps” or “maybe”. Agnosticism acknowledges the possibility, however remote.
Of course you can never prove that something does not exist, but does that justify taking the “we can not know” position? Are we to be agnostic about fairies, unicorns and Santa Claus? I don’t understand what you mean by an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. Both sound like oxymoron to me. What those terms imply is that I believe or not, while at the same time knowing that I can’t know if I’m right or wrong. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
Given that we know the origin of fairies, unicorns, and Santa Claus in literature, we do not need to be agnostic about them. They have been proven to be false, at least in the context of their definitions.
Indeed, most gods have also been proved to have their origins in literature only. These are not gods I would say I am agnostic about. What I am agnostic about is the idea of a god, some kind of being, energy, whatever, which is outside the universe. I don’t believe such a thing exists, because for me that would be too easy. However, given the nature of philosophical thinking, I have to admit that the possibility is there, however remote. Even Dawkins admits his agnosticism by saying he is 99.9% certain there is no God.
Whether the terms “agnostic atheist/theist” make sense to you or not isn’t the issue. They make sense to a lot of people, which is the reason for the article. Your definition is wrong though. What the terms imply is that whether we believe in God or not, the proof of such a being is impossible to find. Knowledge is different to belief. A belief does not need evidence to support it, merely ideas. Knowledge is a belief that has facts. You cannot know something if you do not first believe it to be true.
I don’t buy your whole “yes, but I don’t think it can be proven” line of reasoning, simply because it is not useful. It is meaningless. It can be applied to anything. Make up any fancy fantasy you can think of, and you can apply that line of reasoning. Agnosticism is a dialogue stopper. It is giving up, throwing your hands up in the air and saying, we can never know. The implication is that we should stop wasting our time. What if that sort of logic was to be applied to anything that’s just too hard for us to figure out currently?
I firmly believe that we should stop wasting time trying to “prove” or “disprove” God. Give that the very definition of God puts it outside our realm of existence seems obvious to me that you cannot prove it. Yes, Russell’s teapot is a good example of this. If we cannot prove it, we simply say so and move on. There is no point building massive telescopes for the sole purpose of finding Russell’s teapot, when by it’s very definition puts it outside our observation.
Agnosticism isn’t a scientific method, it is a philosophical method. We do not use it on anything that is too hard for us to firgure out for the reasons you have stated. It is simply not useful. Philosophy has never strived to prove anything. Indeed, all it has done is prove the diversity of the human mind. Agnosticism is an approach on philosophical questions, not scientific ones. It should only be used as such. Agnosticism allows discussion of beliefs or disbeliefs, but states that as soon as you try to prove or disprove those beliefs, you are going to reach a dead end, and you really should stop wasting time.
Pick a side. Either you are convinced there is a God, or you’re not, or you’re on the fence. But you can’t have it both ways, and that’s what your agnostic atheist and agnostic theist terms are, having it both ways. That’s not a position any logical person should take.
Here we have the classic misunderstanding of those terms yet again, which again justifies my article and reasoning for the agnostic project. Agnosticism is not an “on the fence” position. An “on the fence” position would be “I honestly do not know” or “I honestly don’t know what I believe”. An agnostic admits the possibility, but says that they cannot know. Not knowing and not being able to know are too very different things. The former is a form of ignorance, the latter is an admitance to a lack of justifiable method.
We can’t prove that Russell’s teapot does not exist. Does that imply that we should be agnostic about it? There’s millions of things we can’t disprove. Does that lend them legitimacy, simply because we can dream of them?
On a technical level, yes. However I doubt very many people are agnostic about absolutely everything. Agnosticism isn’t about making some claim a legitimate claim, but rather saying “the claim is impossible to prove or disprove, therefore we should stop wastimg time trying to do so”. It pushes the claim to the mountain of the possible, and leaves it there. I could claim a million things, each being possible, and each unable to be disproved. Agnosticism does not have a say on whether they are probable, but whether they are possible. Anosticism does not have a say on whether you should believe such things, and many people would probably choose not to; if the possibility is there, however remote that possibility may be, it must be recognised, if only to designate it as such.
Of course, as I have previously stated in regards to the origins of gods, my ideas would probably reach the same scrutiny. If I simply made something up I wouldn’t expect people to be seriously agnostic about it, simply because I pulled it out of thin air.
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Atheism sucks dude. I mean really.
Jiff
http://www.privacy.cz.tc
Jiff Woods
15 Sep 08 at 11:43 pm (GMT)
I’m fully capable of saying God doesn’t exist while keeping my mind open. An agnostic is someone who doesn’t understand the definition of atheist. So many people live their lives without picking a side or making a decision.
http://brandnewatheist.com/2008/07/29/im-100-certain-there-is-no-god/
Rob Jones
16 Sep 08 at 12:03 am (GMT)
@Rob Jones
With all due respect, that is the worst definition of agnosticism I have heard.
Adrian Hayter
16 Sep 08 at 12:06 am (GMT)
I would argue from the origins of the word that “atheism” is the lack of belief in the existence of a god, rather than a belief in the non-existence of god, and therefore that there are agnostic atheists and faithful atheists.
One thing is clear, however, and that is that any agnostic theists, should they actually exist, reject utterly Occam’s Razor.
I find this a curious philosophical position to hold, as, indeed, it begs the question regarding the existence of not only a god or gods, but of anything and everything.
The question I would have for such agnostic theists is: “Why do you give god a pass here that you undoubtedly give to very few other topics?”. What makes the notion of a “god” so special that the lack of verifiable evidence and the ability to falsify the existence of this entity is outweighed?
Why, indeed, do you not believe in the insubstantial hippopotamus that I claim is reading this over your right shoulder?
Ray
16 Sep 08 at 12:09 am (GMT)
@Ray
Whether you use “lack of belief” or “disbelief” it doesn’t really matter. Atheism has been defined as both, but I think “disbelief” makes more sense given the word “lack” implies that belief in god is somehow “missing” from the atheist and should be there.
As pointed out several times before in previous article discussions, Occam’s Razor is a scientific selector. It is in no way accurate 100% of the time, and it serves only to reject complex scientific claims. It should not be used in philosophy.
I think your questions to agnostic theists are valid ones, but they should be directed at all theists, not just the agnostics.
Adrian Hayter
16 Sep 08 at 12:18 am (GMT)
I merely argue from the position that the definition of a theist is someone that has a belief in one or more gods. Common usage would indicate that an a-theist is someone that does *not* have a belief in one or more gods.
It’s not derived from some inherent presence of belief that an a-theist is somehow missing, it’s derived from the fundamental meaning of theist, which entirely comprises a belief in a god or gods. The word has no other meaning to negate.
Your point that I should address my questions to theists rather than agnostics makes me wonder about the utility of the term. By your definition, the *vast* majority of all theists and atheists are in fact “agnostic”. There are *very* few theists that will even attempt to give a rational reason to believe that the existence of a god or gods can be “proven” by empirical means, and almost every atheist I’ve every spoken to would agree that you can’t prove a negative.
As a dichotomy it fails miserably.
Therefore, I can only believe that you intend it not to be a dichotomy, but to be descriptive of a characteristic that (most) people have. Very well, my questions are directed right at the heart of that characteristic.
Why *this* concept? Why is lack of proof particularly interesting with respect to deities, unless of course you already believe that they exist?
As for Occam’s Razor — given the manifest lack of evidence/proof regarding deities, one might usefully separate the world into theists and atheists based almost entirely on whether they hold it in high regard. So it seems relevant.
Ray
16 Sep 08 at 12:47 am (GMT)
I think agnosticism needs a more secularized and less “soterialized” definition.
Basically, a person who claims to be without gnosis should simply be considered a person who disavows knowledge of first principles in science, epistemology, language or philosophy. This is an essentially humble position, from which many religious people could benefit. It is enough to say that one might grasp Maxwell’s equations without claiming to know that they accurately describe particular or general phenomena. A scientist might claim to grasp the connections between observations without proposing that he has knowledge of the underlying principle actually being observed. Most will just say it is outside their field or expertise.
This is about as general as a-gnosis can get. If you want to apply it to a particular ethnic or cosmological conjecture, you might be well served to invent a new term. Knowledge of primitive deities can hardly be the sum of human knowledge.
David
16 Sep 08 at 1:14 am (GMT)
When we talk about what words mean, it is difficult to ignore current usage. I don’t plan, for example, on changing the definition of ‘white’ any time soon, because when I used it with others I would be miscommunicating.
I strongly associate ‘agnostic’ with an unexamined philosophy about the existence of gods; it is the lukewarm point of compromise of the eternally unsure. I have met few people espouse agnosticism who give gods a 1% chance of existing: more like 50%. This kind of position is not a carefully considered one.
To paint all-but-atheists with the agnostic brush is misleading at best, and needling and hairsplitting at worst. One might as well say that a colour which is 0.01% black and 99.99% white is gray. Technically, microscopically: gray. But ask 1000 people to name it: white.
LL
16 Sep 08 at 4:06 am (GMT)
The people who say we must disbelieve upset me as much as those who say we must believe. I’m not on the fence at all, I know exactly how much I know about the nonexistance of god. I refuse to claim to know any more or less than I actually do, just to fit inside anyone else’s convenient label.
I firmly believe that we should stop wasting time trying to “prove” or “disprove” God.
I’m right there with you. The only reason it’s still relevant to me in any way is the fact that there are still others out there who are using their belief as an excuse to discriminate against others.
So someone is hard atheist - good for him. I do wish he’d stop trying to force his belief system upon me.
The Nerd
16 Sep 08 at 4:46 am (GMT)
An atheist myself, I am convinced that there are no gods. I also am convinced that there are also no theists, theism having matured into something else we haven’t a name for yet. Which means a-theism is also out of date as a concept.
I am also convinced that when it comes to what really matters in the long run, love, peace, compassion, etc., all of us are almost entirely on the same page regardless of our perspective on religion, gods, etc.
Justin
16 Sep 08 at 6:17 am (GMT)
I agree with most of this, but have a few nitpicks:
>Your definition is wrong though
Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose our own definitions - they exist as a means of communication, and tend to be incredibly blurred. By the author’s definition, I’m an agnostic atheist - I believe God has incredibly low possibility for existance, and for that reason disbelieve in it. However, the definition a lot of people go by seems to be: “How do you answer the question ‘Do you believe in God’?”, with “No” being atheist, “I don’t know” agnostic and “Yes” theist. I end up having to explain my position explicitly anyway, especially since people seem to immediately jump from “disbelief” to “know without a shadow of a doubt” (but only for God, rather than fairies / unicorns etc). If we could universalise a good set of consistent definitions it would be great, but the end effect of giving your own “correct” definition is usually to just muddy the waters further. To paraphrase: Thats the wonderful thing about definitions, there are so many to choose from.
>Given that we know the origin of fairies, unicorns, and Santa Claus in literature, we do not need to be agnostic about them. They have been proven to be false, at least in the context of their definitions.
I don’t agree with this. For Santa, OK, we can take proof from the fact that no presents turn up, but this seems to be saying we have disproved unicorns and fairies because they originate in folklore and literature. But that’s just another way of saying “someone made them up”. How is that different from you hypothesising a God? Whats the difference between imagining, with no prior evidence, that a one horned horse exists and imagining, with no prior evidence, that a deist style God exists - does the probability change depending on whether we decide to write it down in a book of fables or a book of philosophy? I think both fairies and God are at the same level of possibility: low enough make disbelief the right position, but not “disproven”.
>Agnosticism isn’t about making some claim a legitimate claim, but rather saying “the claim is impossible to prove or disprove, therefore we should stop wastimg time trying to do so”.
I think this is a different definition again, one inconsistent with what is said above. While it is the original meaning coined by Huxley it seems a fairly unjustified one. Its actually taking a stronger position than the “agnostic atheist” one above, since it seems to explicitly *rule out* the possibility of an interventionist God. Actual intervention would provide us evidence in favour of the existance, so the only way to say that its *impossible* to prove is to know this will never happen. From the above text, I don’t think this is what you mean by agnosticism, but it illustrates the difficulty with definitions in this area - there are so many slightly different ones that people usually need to sit down and spell out exactly what they mean (which all too often turns into an argument about what the correct definition is, rather than substantive discussion)
Brian
16 Sep 08 at 10:22 am (GMT)
This is a warped view of atheism. You clearly understand that atheism simply is that of no belief in diety, yet you continue as though it is some sort of faith professing absolute knowledge. Atheism only says that the evidence is not reasonable enough to lend belief in faith.
Further, you give equal creedence to the case that there may or may not be diety. This is a false proposition. In science we understand something is not unless shown to be otherwise. At what point do you decide that we should give equal creedence to all claims?
You argue outside the realm of realitive knowledge and suggest that because we are not omnipotent, we must only say that there always will be the oft chance of diety being true. However, the atheist posits the same, yet it affirms the scientific principles that portray to us what is and what isn’t acceptable as truth in realativity.
Your argument is simply a misinterpretation of the definition of atheism. An agnostic is an atheist who is not willing to accept reality, rather all possibility.
chbrules
16 Sep 08 at 11:11 am (GMT)
I just realized it is past 3am and I cannot spell “relativity” for crap.
chbrules
16 Sep 08 at 11:12 am (GMT)
@Brian
You are correct, we do not get to choose our own definitions. I haven’t chosen mine, but I have gone along with the definition according to the vast majority of sources.
I started out thinking agnosticism was a stupid “I don’t know” solution to the question about God. I was poised to write an article on agnosticism and why sitting on the fence makes no sense to me. In order to proceed, I looking up the word “agnosticism” is a dictionary, and was astounded that the definition was not one of “I don’t know” but a legitimate philosophical view that I agreed with. I looked it up in other dictionaries, and apart from the changing of a few words, the meanings were the same. There were no dictionaries that defined agnosticism as a non-committal.
The fact that most people think of it as “I don’t know” does not make it any more true than the fact that most people consider the children’s song “Ring a ring o’ Roses” to be about the Great Plague of London. Just as that interpretation of the song doesn’t hold and is regarded as baseless by folklore scholars, the definition of agnosticism as a position of “I don’t know” is also baseless.
A good question, and one that relates back to my argument against Skepdude’s statistical analysis. We have the data for unicorns, we know what they are meant to look like, what attributes they have, etc. We have never observed one though, so they are so far disproven. With the God idea, there are may ideas on what it looks like, what attributes it has, etc; but the main event that is placed on God is the start of everything. We can ignore all the things about it’s appearance and supposed attributes because like the unicorn, we have not seen them. However, we know that everything exists, and that there was a beginning to our observable universe. We do not know what caused the universe, nor if there exists the multiverse, and what caused that. God is still a valid hypothesis for these events, however small the probability, and whether you believe in God or not.
I don’t quite see how it rules out that possibility. If there were an interventionist God, the evidence for such might not be seen as such. In fact, how can we prove that everything about the natural universe is being directly controlled? What we call natural could simply be the intervention of the supernatural. Agnosticism sees this problem as impossible to resolve, and so ignores it.
Wikipedia I feel sums up the current state of agnosticism quite well:
@chbrules
I would never link atheism with knowledge. Atheism being a disbelief or lack of belief has nothing to do with knowledge, as beliefs do not require knowledge. An atheist professing absolute knowledge would be a gnostic atheist, and there are some that I have met. I am not one of these atheists.
In science yes, in philosophy no. Agnosticism should never be linked to science because it has nothing valid to offer science. Agnosticism is a purely philosophical view, and should be held as one.
I challenge you to find me a dictionary definition (one which has been published as a proper book) that has this definition of agnosticism.
The challenge is of course ridiculous because of the existence of agnostic theists, so your claim of agnostics being atheists is contradicted immediately. I’d still love to see a definition of agnosticism which includes the words “not willing to accept reality” though.
Adrian Hayter
16 Sep 08 at 1:46 pm (GMT)
You do link atheism with absolute knowledge because you conclude it rules out possibility of a diety being true; which it does not. You could not know something for certain without absolute knowledge, which you are trying to link with atheism, which is false.
My point is that you give equal creedence to all propositions regardless of warrant for them. We live in a finite system, which is ruled by finite probability. Not everything is true because if it were then we would be in an infinite system.
However, because not everything is true, we live in a finite system. You can argue other universes and other nonsense, but our perceived system and reality are finite. Thusly, we have the ability to speculate on given odds that a proposition is so far off of being true that it most likely will never happen and can be assumed as such and used as relative information.
There is no such thing as absolute knowledge as much so as there is no such thing as true randomness or choice.
chbrules
16 Sep 08 at 2:36 pm (GMT)
Where did I say that? Show me the precise sentence where I linked atheism to absolute knowledge. I have never done so and I never will. Atheism isn’t anything to do with knowledge, it is to do with the belief that God exists. Atheism says “I do not believe that”.
Agnosticism is the philosophy that links to knowledge. Whether you use it for absolute or relative knowledge, it still relates to it.
Adrian Hayter
16 Sep 08 at 2:46 pm (GMT)
My reply is too long to post here as a comment. So I have posted it as
an entry in my blog, Skepfeeds
I think people will find this discussion interesting.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 3:50 am (GMT)
[...] my comments caught the author’s eyes who in turn posted another entry, titled “Agnosticism: The Argument” in which he (I am not sure if it should be she, it is not clear from the blog, so I’ll [...]
The Agnostic debate « Skepfeeds-The Best Skeptic blogs of the day
18 Sep 08 at 3:51 am (GMT)