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A friend recently sent me a request in an email:

Adrian, hope you are well. Would you be kind and help me answer this email from a Christian who thinks Atheists are intellectually dishonest – his reasoning is a first for me.
Take care, Robert

Atheists? Intellectually dishonest? At first I think that perhaps this theist has come across an atheist who made some ridiculous statement, and has assumed all atheists think like that. The attached theist “argument” provided all the answers:

Robert, I know Christians have done evil as well! I’m a sinner Saved by grace! By the way it is impossible to be an atheist and be intellectually honest! You can be agnostic at best!  In order to be an atheist you have to know everything there is to know! Since you and I do not Know everything there is to know, it is possible for God to exist in the area you do not know: BY DEFINITION AGNOSTIC AT BEST if you are intelectually honest!? I believe you are!!!!!

As I read the paragraph, I realized that this particular theist hadn’t come across a stupid atheist, but rather hadn’t come across a dictionary in what seems like quite a while. He’s confused the meaning of the word ‘atheist’ for starters, and then confused the meaning of the word ‘agnostic’ such that both are mutually exclusive. In his world, you can either be an atheist, or an agnostic (so I’m not sure where that puts him as a theist).

My response was a quick lesson on definitions.

This fellow seems to have his definitions a little off. Firstly, an atheist is simply defined as someone “without gods”, coming from the Greek word “atheos”, meaning ‘a’ (without) and ‘theos’ (gods). Therefore to put any other meaning on the word is to commit intellectual dishonesty yourself. Given that the subject of Gods comes down to a belief (namely theism), to be “without gods” is to not believe in theism. In other words, an atheist is someone who “does not believe in gods”.

The theist in this argument has falsely asserted that all atheists are of the “God does not exist” type, which is a massive error given that most of them do not fall under this category at all. He also makes the wrong assumption that being agnostic is something mutually exclusive to being an atheist, when the complete opposite is the case.

Atheism, as I have previously defined it, is all about belief. Atheists do not “believe” in gods. Agnosticism is the position that certain things in reality (and some agnostics, myself included would say *all* things) are unprovable, in the sense that an absolute position about them cannot be known. I do not deny that absolute knowledge exists, but as an agnostic I deny that fallible and limited beings can ever “know” absolutely what those absolutes are. All knowledge is relative to us, and thus agnosticism is a position not of belief, but of knowledge.

The relationship between knowledge and belief is a simple one. You can have belief without having knowledge, and you can have non-belief without having knowledge. For example, I could be in a dark room, a mile below the surface on the Earth, and espouse the belief that it was raining on the surface, without having any knowledge (relative or absolute) that it was. Likewise, I could espouse the opposite belief, that it is not raining on the surface via the same system.

However, to have knowledge, you must also have belief. It is a fallacious statement to say “I know it is raining outside, but I don’t believe it.” Knowledge implies belief, for as Plato wrote, knowledge is “justified, true, belief”.

Thus there are 4 positions you can have concerning belief and knowledge of God:

Agnostic Atheism – “I don’t believe in God, but I don’t make any claim to have knowledge of the existence of such a being.”
Gnostic Atheism – “I don’t believe in God, and I know such a being doesn’t exist.”
Agnostic Theism – “I believe in God, but I don’t make any claim to have knowledge of the existence of such a being.”
Gnostic Theism – “I believe in God, and I know such a being exists.”

The theist is correct in his argument if you have claimed Gnostic Atheism, and likewise if someone has claimed Gnostic Theism. To know a non-temporal being existed or didn’t exist, you would have to have knowledge of the non-temporal, and as temporal beings this knowledge is beyond our capabilities.

If however, like most intelligent atheists and theists you meet, you claim agnostic atheism or theism, then you are being intellectually honest. You are admitting the possibility (however small) that God may exist (or not exist as the agnostic theist would say), because you realise that such knowledge is impossible for us to know.

This is the original argument Thomas Huxley made when he defined the word Agnostic, and the argument was visualized very well by Bertrand Russell and is known as “Russell’s teapot” (Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell’s_teapot), which deals primarily with the reasons why the burden of proof is on the claimant, but uses agnosticism to reason such a position.

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Whilst I vehemently disagree with her deterministic worldview, and find her arguments in support of it almost laughable, Laci (gogreen18) has put together a fantastic video demonstrating the difference between atheism and agnosticism to the YouTube masses. She also delves into the “quad” structure I described in a previous post. Although I would say that her definition of agnosticism is far too narrow and doesn’t include the property of “provability” which is so important to it, the video is a step in the right direction.

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In my opinion, when considering the question of God there are three aspects that must be addressed: Belief – Whether or not you believe in God, Knowledge – Whether or not you claim absolute knowledge of the existence of God, or claim God can be proven in some way, Certainty – How certain you are of your beliefs (of disbeliefs). Although the three aspects are closely related, they are exclusive to one another. That is to say, one can believe in God, not claim absolute knowledge, and also be relatively uncertain of their belief.

The difference between knowledge and belief is subtle but explainable. Knowledge can best be seen as a subset of belief, and this can be demonstrated by the fact that someone can believe something that is provably wrong (such as someone claiming they believe 1 + 1 = 3), but they cannot know something and hold a disbelief in it. I cannot disbelieve that 1 + 1 = 2 because I know it to be true. Of course, one could argue that a person might lie, but this doesn’t change the fact that when answering truthfully they would admit belief. This argument also does not allow for people who are willingly ignorant for obvious reasons.

Once the difference between knowledge and belief is fully understood, the difference between knowledge and certainty should be quite easy to see. I have explained this to quite a few people when talking about my position on gods, and the best way I can explain it is with the following problem:

Suppose you are alone in a dark empty room. You can hear the pitter patter of raindrops on the ceiling above you. With this limited observation, (a) could you know that it is raining outside the room?, and (b) could you be certain it was raining outside the room?

Rational people would answer a definite “no” to (a), simply because there are an large number of explanations for the sound other than “it is raining outside”. Friends usually have some fun coming up with alternative explanations, such as a sound system, a mental delusion, a hallucination, etc. The answer to (b) really depends on the person, and answers vary along a large range. Most people come to the conclusion that they would be “pretty certain” it was raining outside, and that this decision is based on previous experience of listening to rain on a roof. If one were to plot a probability distribution of all the possible explanations, “it is raining” would be the highest bar. It is simply the most likely explanation for the sound. They key thing to remember about certainty and knowledge is that you can be 100% certain about something and still be wrong. I am 100% certain that I’ll be alive tomorrow, but that won’t stop a stray car or my heart suddenly having an attack.

The relationship between certainty and belief usually depends on the type of belief. For example, I’m a “believer” (not the best word) in the theory of Evolution, and I’m 100% certain that it is true. I’m also a “believer” in the Higg’s boson, but not as certain about it (although I’m certain enough to have a bet with a friend over it). Believers in God are usually quite certain, if not 100% certain about their beliefs. I’d say most atheists were also quite certain about their beliefs.

So, we have three aspects of a position on God to create a scale out of. Belief, defined through one’s atheism/theism, Knowledge, defined through one’s agnosticism/gnosticism, and Certainty, defined through “Strong”/”Weak”. I’ve used the Strong/Weak terms out of their original definition simply because they are good words to use for the aspect of certainty. To clarify, someone who is “strong atheist” in this scale would say they are 100% certain about their disbelief in gods, and a “weak atheist” would be someone who is not 100% certain.

The Scale

1. Strong Gnostic Theist - Believes in God, holds God as provable (or proven) and is 100% certain about its existence.
2. Strong Agnostic Theist – Believes in God, holds God as unprovable (or unproven) but is still 100% certain about its existence.
3. Weak Agnostic Theist – Believes in God, holds God as unprovable (or unproven) and is uncertain about its existence.
4. Apatheist – Could be described as 100% uncertain about their beliefs. Usually agnostic, and with a distinct sense of apathy on forming any opinion on the existence of God.
5. Weak Agnostic Atheist – Disbelieves in God, holds God as unprovable (and unproven), but is still uncertain about its non-existence.
6. Strong Agnostic Atheist – Disbelieves in God, holds God as unprovable (and unproven), but is 100% certain about its non-existence.
7. Strong Gnostic Atheist – Disbelieves in God, holds God’s non-existence as provable (or provable), and is 100% certain about its non-existence.

Note that there are no places for Weak Gnostic Theism or Weak Gnostic Atheism, since to “know” something immediately nulls any form of uncertainty on it.

In case any of you were wondering, I rank myself a 6 on this scale. Any comments concerning my arguments on the philosophy of knowledge are most welcome. I know (at least in the non-absolute sense) this is a well debated problem amongst philosophers.

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Atheists claim to not believe in gods, but this is a lie. Deep down they really know there is a God, but they don’t like what this means and so they lie about what they believe. So remember, the next time you meet an atheist, despite them claiming that they have no belief in gods, they secretly know that He exists!

…or so some people like to claim, like David if he is reading this. David is an acquaintance of mine; we do the same course; we talk about computing often. David is a nice chap. David is also a Christian who is on a mission to convert my soul to Jesus. He is a member of Royal Holloway’s unofficial Christian Union, which I attend for the fun and cakes.

Tonight I went along, wearing a t-shirt that says “Thank God I’m an Atheist”. It’s meant to be ironic, an atheist thanking “God”, but the joke is lost on some people. Some people have said I am “stupid” for wearing it because it is contradictory. Some people have no sense of humour.

Whether or not David understood the t-shirt or not isn’t the issue, it never came up. What is the issue is his insistence that whilst I say I do not believe in God, I really know he exists “deep down”. To him, this is a good argument. To me, this is an insult. It is not only implying I am a liar, but also that I am stupid. Only a stupid person would choose not to believe (and thereby end up with a one-way ticket to Hell) if they knew that God existed.

So no David, I do not “know” God exists deep down. I do not know if God exists at all, and I think the existence of God is somewhat unknowable, at least for myself. Since I do not know if God exists or not, and I have seen no reason to believe one does, I also do not believe in gods. This brings me quickly to the second point I wanted to outline:

Agnostic atheists do exist.

Trust me, they do. Just ask the vast majority of atheist readers of my blog, and I’m sure they will be happy to tell you. That said, I’m glad you actually understood the definition of agnosticism. You were quite right in saying it states that “God is unknowable”. Where you get confused is where this links in with atheism. I could go on about how knowledge and belief cover different things, but I suspect there are far better sites out there that handle it much better than I could.

So no David, despite what you might think, I am not an agnostic instead of an atheist, I am both.

I do hope you take my advice, go to Google, and search for “Agnostic Atheism”. In fact, if you are reading this (and I hope you are), here is a link. The first three results (Wikipedia, All About Philosophy, and About.com) all have material you should read on the subject, and hopefully the next time you wish to talk about atheism/religion, you’ll have the decency to respect my views as I respect yours.

See you in class tomorrow,

Adrian

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Among the first to contact me was a guy named Dan who demonstrated the remarkably small world we live in by revealing that we are actually next door neighbours. Since then he has made an admirable effort to help hand out flyers, which usually ended up with us in the student bar having a drink.

One of our members from last year, Jack Lenox, put me in contact with another student who was trying to form a Humanist Alliance at Royal Holloway, unaware that the AAA was actually around. He got a lot of facebook support, and we have decided to join forces under an umbrella group. The new group, which will probably be called something like “Royal Holloway Secular Students” is going to include the sub-groups of Humanism and the AAA, since the Humanism group already has a number of theist members. Group meetings will take place at the same time, with us talking about broader secular subjects at the start, and then turning over to the “militant atheist wing” (us) at the end.

I have also penned my first column for “The Atheist Column” in the student newspaper The Founder, which should come out within the next week or so. I decided to respond to a few people who had questioned me over the usage of the term “Bright” on the flyers.

Are the “Brights” worth it?

During freshers’ week, members of the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance handed out flyers that explained the term “Bright” as a positive word for someone who lives without supernatural or spiritual notions. Founded in America in 2003, the Brights movement sought to replace the label of “godless” with something that wasn’t anti-, or non- anything, much in the same way that the term “gay” is now used to describe homosexuals.

In the harsh religious environment of America, where to be an atheist means both social and political discrimination, this idea holds some weight. In the UK though, the vast majority of people would call themselves secular, seeing religion as something that shouldn’t interfere with politics. Indeed, where in the USA an atheist would never get to high levels of public office (without lying about their beliefs), the current leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, does not believe in God. So should the term “Bright” still be used?

I think instead of using the Brights as a platform for change, we should use the organisation purely to group people of similar worldviews together. The Brights have meetings all over the UK, open to people who subscribe to different labels, whether it be atheism, agnosticism, humanism, scepticism, and many more. As for trying to enforce the meaning of the word, I think efforts should instead be focused on changing the public perceptions of the original terms. “Bright” is a great word for describing people who hold no supernatural worldview, but it doesn’t cover individual positions on belief in gods. Both atheists and secularists can be Brights, but whilst an atheist does not believe in gods, a secularist might.

What was clear though, from a number of people I spoke to during freshers’ week, is that the term “Bright” is very vague in who it encompasses. Some Brights will argue that it is a strictly non-believing organisation, whilst others will insist that as long as you do not use the supernatural to make decisions, you are welcome. In fact the only people who I think do not belong in the Brights group are those who actively participate in faith healing, psychic readings, or active prayer and other similar activities.

The Atheist & Agnostic Alliance’s relationship with the Brights is really one of “business only”. They were kind enough to make good looking flyers at low cost, and they are a great source of speakers for the “godless” events we are planning this year. Other than that, the groups should keep separate.

If all goes well, this should be an interesting year for Royal Holloway. Watch out for the infidel invasion!

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I am not sure if it should be she, it is not clear from the blog, so I’ll refer to the author as a he from this point on. My apologies if this turns out to be incorrect!

I am indeed a he. My name is at the bottom of every article and next to my comments: “Adrian Hayter”, but I understand the confusion. Adrienne is the female version of my name, and my long hair in the comment avatars doesn’t help matters.

As you can clearly see from his first paragraph he defined an atheist as someone who says :”I do not believe in God”. Yes he did follow that by saying that this is a generalization, and that “some” atheist say that they “know” or are “certain” there is no god.  But that’s where he stopped. I did not accuse him of defining atheism as a belief. What I did do is to challenge his definition of an atheist and the choice of words he used in that definition. He uses a very extreme definition of atheism.

Well I would hardly call the definition “do not believe in God” a “very extreme” definition of atheism. In fact, it seems to be the one that most dictionaries I have looked in go with:

1. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings. (Dictionary.com)
2. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. (American Heritage)
3. The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being. (Websters)

Indeed, some atheists do say they “know” or are “certain” there is no god. When I wrote the standard definition (disbelief), I did not want to ignore those who take this definition further by saying they either know or are certain.

Richard Dawkins in his “God Delusion” talks about 7 levels (if my memory serves me right)  of belief/disbelief and level 6 and 7 are occupied by atheists, with level 7 being the kind who “believes” or “knows” that there is no God. Not even RD who is an ardent atheist sees himself as belonging to category #7, because that category is jsut as dogmatic as the ardent, dogmatic Sky Daddy worshipers. The way the “Atheist Blogger” defined atheism in his entry suggest that atheist are of the category 7 kind. That is what I am challenging. I am not that sort of atheist. Richard Dawkins is not. Anyone with a little bit of integrity cannot accept to be labeled as such.

My point is simple. Accepting that the probability of God existing is really really, infinitesimaly small is by leaps and bounds not the same as saying that you know, or are certain, or believe he does not exist.

I do not see how my definition of atheists as people who say they do not believe in Gods means that I meant they believe there are no gods, or even that they know there are no Gods. Not believing in something doesn’t mean you believe in the opposite. I made that mistake in the past and have since rectified it in discussions. I am not a 7 either. I do not believe in Gods, and I would never say “I believe there are no gods” or “I know there are no gods”.

As for his last point, that accepting the probability of God existing not being the same as saying you know, or are certain, I am in total agreement. That was the entire point I made about agnostic atheism. If you are a 7, you claim to “know” that God does not exist, making you a form of gnostic atheist, “gnostic” used as the opposite of “agnostic”, not the Christian spirituality group. Gnosticism in this case is the view that you can know god.

Yes, as I said, my stance on god’s non-existence is of a statistical nature. Yes, I can’t claim to know that God does not exist, which is another way of saying that I don’t have the “knowledge” that god does not exist, specifically because non-existence is not a provable hypothesis. What does the fact that statistics itself is knowledge have to do with my lack of knowledge about gods non existence? That is a non sequitur.  Just beacuse statistics is considered knowledge, and just becasue I reach a conclusion based on statistics, it does not follow that my conclusion itself can be considered knowledge.  I can have perfect statistics but wrong premises, or an incomplete set of premises and my answer would be wrong, thus not knowledge, even though my statistics were impecable. I really do not see how he has addressed my point that I can’t claim to have knowledge of god’s nonexistence based on his answer.

My point on the statistics was that you claimed your statistical analysis was not based on belief or knowledge, but statistics is in itself that analysis of knowledge. In this case, you analyzed the knowledge you had, which included the fact that there is no verifiable evidence for God, and used this to produce a statistical probability.

Knowledge is a branch of belief? That doesn’t make any sense regardless how you define belief. Just what in god’s name does that even mean? How is knowledge a branch of belief? In what sense? I think the Atheist Blogger needs to elaborate on that point as he’s close to committing atheistic heresy.

Elaborate I will. In philosophy, Moore’s paradox explains the relation between knowledge and belief. Moore stated that to say “It is raining outside but I don’t believe it to be true” is a paradox. You cannot possibly know something and not believe it. In Epistemology, to know P is to believe P is true. In other words, knowledge implies belief. Perhaps I could have related this a tad better in my original article.

I find it hard to believe that such things are being writen by someone who claims to be an atheist. This is the sort of apologetic goal post moving tactics you’d expect from religious people who are too embarrased by their religion’s earthly claims and hide behind a God who is out of reach, can never be touched by reason, logic or science. In other words the old definition of God does not stand up to logical scrutiny, so let’s make up a new god which is impervious to reason. This is exactly what Carl Sagan was talking about when he gave the example of the invisible dragon, who breathes heatless fires and leaves no imprints on the flour on the floor. This attitude is pointless, useless and it leads nowhere. We can postulate anything, claim that it is out of the reach of reason, and bam we have ourselves something to be agnostic about. I’m sorry that just makes me giggle.

I agree, the attitude is ultimately pointless, useless, and leads nowhere. The purpose of agnosticism isn’t to lead anywhere though, but to confirm the possibility of a God. It isn’t agnostics that are moving the posts though, but the theists who claim such things. They are the ones who claim God to be outside our observable universe, on another plane of existence, or whatever else they have claimed about it. The agnostics are the ones who simply say, given the nature of such a being, it is impossible to prove or disprove it. You are quite correct, we could come up with something, put it outside reason, and be agnostic about it. The reason we do not do so is because there aren’t a massive number of people claiming something else like this. Another reason why God gets special treatment is because theists are claiming that it created everything, and on some occasions has a direct effect on what happens when we die. These are all things that affect people if they are true, and people are more likely to think about certain ideas if they have supposed affects on them than say, a giant iguana who lives between universes and doesn’t do anything.

Secondly, I don’t think Dawkins would be caught dead using the word “agnostic” to describe himself, but that is my opinion based on what I’ve heard him say and his writings and I may be shown wrong on that.

Possibly because in his book he uses the definition of “agnostic” as someone who “doesn’t know” if they believe in god or not. His scale of 1-7 puts agnosticism in position 4, which agnosic atheists such as myself disagree with. If you used the original definition (and current one used by dictionaries) the Dawkins would be an agnostic atheist. This is clearly evident by his rating of 6.9 on his scale. If a 7 is someone who says you can know there is no god, anything below would be someone who says you cannot know (until you reach the other end of the scale, with 1 being someone who claims you can know there is a God). Dawkins doesn’t seek to disprove God, because he understands this is impossible, but he still strongly disbelieves the notion that one exists. The question of belief in the existence of god and the actual existence of god are different questions. People often make the mistake of using agnosticism purely in terms of belief, when it should be in terms of the truth value of the claim.

Ok, so there goes an ad populum fallacy. The term makes sense to a lot of people huh? First of all, for all those people it makes sense to, we can probably find just as many that it does not, as such that argument holds no water. Secondly, it does not matter how many people it makes sense to, I can still criticize it. How can you claim that agnosticism is a stance which says “we can’t know” and atheism is a stance which says ” I know” and still use the two words together? That my friend is the definition of contradiction, an oxymoron. You can’t know while at the same time saying that you don’t know. Just explain to me how, based on your two definitions, this makes any sense at all? On the flip side how can anyone be an agnostic theist? So this person knows there is a God because he’s a theist, but at the same time he know’s he can’t really know if there is a God? Something’s gotta give, and it seems simple logic is what is giving here.

Firstly I wasn’t trying to prove any point about the definitions other than they mean something to some people, therefore there is reason to discuss them. I never implied that because a lot of people agree with them that they are therefore true. You simply said that the terms didn’t make sense to you, which is irrelevant. Not understanding something is no grounds to dismiss it.

I never said atheism is a stance that says “I know”, I said atheism is a stance that says “I disbelieve”. The stance that some atheists take is “I know”, which is a form of gnostic atheism: Disbelieving something and knowing it to be true or reckoning it can be proven.

Someone can be an agnostic theist by the simple fact that theism is a belief in god, not a position on “knowledge” of god. There are people who claim to know that god exists, or that god can be proven, making them gnostic theists, and people who claim to believe in god yet think the proof is impossible to obtain. Indeed something had to give, and it was your misunderstanding of the definitions of theism/atheism.

And why do you say that knowledge is different to belief when at the very beginning you said that knowledge is a branch of belief? Can you please explain that contradiction to me? If knowledge is in fact, as you claim, belief with facts than if anything belief is a subset of knowledge not the other way around.

The mere fact there is a branch surely explains there is a difference? What would be the purpose of the branch otherwise? H. sapiens branched off from an ancestor on the evolutionary tree, but we would hardly call them the same would we? In philosophy, the relation of knowledge and belief is clear.

“You cannot know something if you do not first believe it to be true.” You’ve gotta be kidding me right? So this is how you think the process of acquiring knowledge works? We first start with something we believe to be true and then find the facts to add on top of our belief to turn it into knowledge? You have it completely backwards my friend. Knowledge and facts lead to belief (trust not faith) that something is infact true, not the other way around. It seems you’re not talking about knowledge of the scientific kind when you use that word. Maybe we are having a semantics battle over here.

Indeed as you have probably deduced by now, I am talking about it in a purely philosophical sense. I would have thought that clear from the start when we were talking about things such as atheism, agnosticism, etc, but I apologize if that wasn’t made clear.

I think perhaps the entire discussion is a semantics battle.

The world was created by God is not a philosophical question, it is a scientific one. God performs miracles, raises the dead, walks on water are not philosophical issues but empirical ones. God’s existence is not a philosophical issue, it is an empirical issue unless you strip him of everything that’s ever been attributed to him, which seems to me that’s what you’re doing.

I always thought of science as the study of the natural world, so a supernatural god being wouldn’t even come close to being something to do with science. Philosophy on the other hand, is the study of problems to do with things like existence, knowledge, beauty, etc. The existence of God is a philosophical question.

Are you agnostic about ghosts? Are you agnostic about talking to the dead? Are you agnostic about UFOs? It seems to me the answers to those questions should be yes, yes, and yes. We just can’t know!

Again, as the answers should technically be yes, most people do not consider them important enough to acknowledge. In fact, UFO’s exist, we just don’t know what they are. Even if you meant aliens, I would not be agnostic about them either. The universe is only finitely sized, and if the aliens live within it, we can know about them.

I’ve just noticed the three links automatically generated below your post which explain agnostic atheism rather well, so I encourage you to read them, as well as anyone else interested in them^[1][2][3].

I’m not sure what you want to in terms of this “debate”. I don’t think continually hopping between blogs is going to be good for anyone, and I think it is clear that we are simply running round each other with different dictionaries and interpretations. I tend to go with the definition Thomas Huxley came up with, you tend to go with the definition that has been hijacked and pushes agnosticism into the question of belief.

Yes, technically we could be agnostic about absolutely everything, but as you rightly pointed out this is intellectual suicide. The only reason we are agnostic about god is because of the status that has been thrust upon it, and the fact that if such a being existed it would have an impact. Agnosticism is useful in this case because it can unite theists with atheists over the issue. Instead of arguing over the existence of god, they can agree that such a being is unprovable and lay the issue to rest. Creationists and biblical literalists are the people who claim that god can be known through the Bible, or through reasoning, and they are the people who make the constant mistakes and illogical arguments.

I have received a lot of support for my original idea of having some kind of website which people could put their name down in support of original definitions, but I think given the amount of opposition who simply refused or could not understand the terms, I will have to abandon the project. I think the best way to argue agnostic atheism is to get people to simply look up the word as I did. Hopefully they will be surprised at how wrong the public interpretation was all these years.

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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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These days, agnosticism is seen as another position on the existence of God, namely “I don’t know”. It is supposedly a neutral position, used by people who do not want to subject themselves to the usual stereotypes that atheism comes with. What agnosticism really is though, is something completely different.

Agnosticism isn’t a position on whether God exists or not, as theism and atheism are, but on whether it is possible to know if God exists or not. There is a big difference. A person who is an atheist says “I do not believe in God”. That is a generalization as I realize some atheists would say “I know there is no God”, or “I am certain there is no God”. A person who is agnostic says “I do not think you can prove or disprove the existence of God”.

The difference is that belief and disbelief have nothing to do with proof. Once something is proved there is no need for belief, only in semantic terms (e.g. knowledge implies belief). One would never say “I believe we walk on two legs” as a statement of faith, nor would one utter “I do not believe we have three arms” as a statement of disbelief. Both examples have been proved through observation and general reasoning. Everyone knows that we walk on two legs, just as everyone knows that we do not have three arms.

So it is pretty clear then that agnosticism and atheism are indeed separate, but are so because they do not cover the same things. They not mutually exclusive. By common definitions, you cannot both be a Christian and an atheist, or a Christian and a Muslim, because of incompatible beliefs (God / No God, Yahweh / Allah).

In fact, most atheists would agree with the statement “I do not think you can prove or disprove the existence of God”, and so would a large percentage of theists. I am an agnostic atheist, and some of my closest friends are agnostic theists. For someone to do a survey of different beliefs about God and cite agnostics as separate to atheists and indeed theists is pure lunacy, and shows an ignorance towards the definition of agnosticism.

It also shows that a large number of people have no idea what the definition of agnosticism is either, and have just been taught that it is a word for non-committal about the existence of God, rather than an admittance that it is impossible to know. A good example of this recently came from Friendly Atheist, who found an interesting survey / artwork that uses a grain of rice to represent one person in the City of Birmingham, UK. The rice is arranged into “religions”, the most prominent being Christianity, but with Agnostics and Atheists in close second and third place respectively. Sure, it is a great view of how religion is diverse, but I have some questions for the agnostics in that group:

1) Yes or no, do you believe in God?

A question involving belief in something has a yes or no answer, there is no middle ground. Agnosticism is an expansion of a belief, not a belief. You could answer “Yes, but I do not think God can be proven”, which makes you an agnostic theist, or you could answer “No, but I do not think God can be proven”, which makes you an agnostic atheist.

2) Given that agnosticism isn’t a religion (neither is atheism but I can understand why the survey has it), which religion do you belong to?

If you are an agnostic theist, you could pick any, seeing as knowledge is not a prerequisite for being a member of any religion I have heard of. If you are an agnostic atheist, you could simply say “non-religious”, or you could claim Secular Humanism (which some see as a religion, others not). You could even claim Buddhism, as they have no God figure technically speaking.

I don’t want to argue points about what is or isn’t a religion though; my main argument is against these kinds of surveys which perceive agnosticism as some kind of position on God’s existence, when really it is a position on the (for lack of a better word) provability or knowability of God’s existence.

I suggest some kind of website to be set up, where the correct definition of agnosticism is given, along with the above statement of “unknowability”, and where people who agree can add their name to a list in support of said statements.

The website itself would have no direct affiliation with either atheist or theist sites, nor would it favour one over the other. It would be a place for both atheist and theist blogs to link to if they agreed with it.

A possible inclusion to the site would be the definition of “apatheism”, which as far as I can tell is the best equivalent to “I don’t know”, although it also encompasses “I don’t care”.

What I really need is some feedback on whether or not this is a good idea, and what people think generally. I’m not trying to be as big as the Out Campaign, nor do I want to achieve anything other than the awareness of agnosticism.

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They firstly define atheism as a “lack of belief in a deity” when the universally accepted definition is that of “disbelief in gods” (note the singular vs plural). They use this definition to make the following case:

Likewise a Christian may be a strong atheist towards the Hindu gods.

This is a massive error in a definition. It is true that Christians are strong disbelievers in the Hindu gods, but that does not make them atheists. You cannot be both a Christian and an atheist because Christians are theists, and the two are incompatible. Atheism rejects all gods, not specific ones.

The next misconception is the one that being agnostic means you are “not sure” about the existence of gods. However, they take it to the max with this paragraph.

Furthermore, agnosticism is a type of atheism. Mainstream media and many people will rarely make note of this because many choose to use the term agnostic to describe their lack of belief due to the negative connotations the media associates with the term atheist, but technically agnostics are atheists: You cannot believe in something you are not sure exists!

Agnosticism is not a type of atheism. It does not cover disbelief in the existence of gods, it covers whether or not the existence of gods can be known. For instance, if I were to claim that outside reality (the universe as we know it) there existed a fairy cake, you would have to be agnostic about it. There is no way currently that we can see what is outside reality (or if indeed there is an outside), so you cannot either prove or disprove my statement. The same applies to God. Since God is supposedly unseen and unobservable, we cannot detect it, and so one must remain agnostic about it to be rational.

The second thing that should be noted about this paragraph is that you can believe in something if you aren’t sure it exists. Knowledge implies belief, not the other way around. Knowledge is often considered a subset of belief, mainly because it is the result of rational justified belief. To have knowledge you must first believe it to be true, otherwise it just wouldn’t work. However, you can believe in something without having knowledge of it. This is precisely how science works. If scientists simply gave up believing in their theories because they hadn’t got enough evidence to prove them, then we wouldn’t get anywhere.

Technology works on the same premise. People look at a current system / product and say “I believe I could do better than that”. They then go away, start thinking about how to approach the design / implementation, and eventually come up with a better system / product.

There are some that claim you can be an “agnostic theist“, implying someone believes in gods but recognizes that the knowledge of gods’ existence may or will never be known. While this is technically true, we are unaware of any practical use of such a term, as the generic definition of [deist] seems to fit that bill.

They manage to get a correct definition of agnosticism into their argument against agnostic theism which seems a bit bizarre, not to mention contradictory. There are plenty of people who are agnostic theists, and an argument from ignorance isn’t going to work for an encyclopedia. As for the definition of a deist, it is simply a person who believes that there is a god (or gods) but they have no control over the universe. They simply created it and for whatever reason do not (or cannot) control anything in it. These people are not theists, and whether they are agnostic or gnostic about their beliefs depends on whether they think the evidence for such a god is available.

I think the idea of a freethoughtpedia is great. As long as sources are cited and proper definitions are used. Free-thought means you do not subscribe to any doctrines. Dictionaries do not count as doctrines, neither do any form of research paper. Use them. At the moment, freethoughtpedia looks more like conservapedia than wikipedia, and everyone knows which of those is the more reliable…

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Thus I deduce that labels are annoying, yet I can’t label myself “anti-label” since that would be hypocritical. Therefore I’m doing the most obvious thing. I’m reverting back to a single word:

Atheist

If agnosticism comes up in conversation someday I’ll just run for the nearest exit. I’m keeping my label as simple as I possibly can…

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