Brent Rasmussen, at Unscrewing the Inscrutable, has a nice smackdown of the atheism-intolerance of Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College and Distinguished Scholar of the City University of New York, with which I agree totally.
But in the course of it, Brent shows a taxonomy of the so-called "weak" versus "strong" atheism that is so common on the internet, but which is what I dispute. More below the fold...
Here is Brent's taxonomy in a diagram:
My problem lies in the primacy of the questions that are asked, to which these axes are potential answers. I agree that concepts form locations in semantic spaces, for which each variable is either a Yes/No answer or one of degrees of commitment, but there is a problem with the way he, and others (I'm not taking Brent to task personally, for this is a widely held view), set up this debate.
Each axis is in effect a question: can we know God or facts about God? (the Gnosis axis), and does god exist? (the Atheist/Theist axis). Here is my concern - can we say anything about God's existence or not if we deny that the question of God is a knowable one, which is the agnostic position or perspective? I say that we cannot. I have absolutely no idea what a "weak theism" could be - do they believe in God's existence but think that the question is unanswerable? It's not enough to say they have faith God exists but think that is not knowledge - they are taking a firm position, and that counts as an epistemic commitment. Instead, I think the issues are better put together like this:
If the axes are simple binary choices, then no theist can be "below" the line of knowledge. If they believe God exists, then they have implicitly or explicitly taken a position on the knowability of God. But more realistically, if we treat the axes as degrees of certainty or likelihood (from -1 for complete rejection to 0 for ambivalence, to 1 for complete acceptance) then anything "below" the line is agnosticism. And if you think that you cannot know what the strue about God (as I do) then neither atheism nor theism are positions you will take.
Deism, or "religion without revelation" is an interesting test of this taxonomy. Deists think there is a God, but apart from knowledge of the physical world, we can know nothing about that God other than He (or They or It) exist. So they are very close to the ambivalence point. But even the simple declaration that there exists something divine is "above" the line (I'm using Brent's scale here, so "above" is below in my taxonomy).
Why agnostics like myself reject the appellation of "weak atheism" is that we do not take any position on whether God exists or not, because we think it is simply an unanswerable question. And being told, as we are, by atheists who do take a position on the existence of God, that we are atheists is to basically deny our most fundamental commitment - that these questions admit of no reliable, knowable or testable solution. Hence, we get a bit snarky.
Atheists should like this, though, because it makes theism a minority position out of all possible views to hold. And the kind of theism that we all object to, which is contrary to science and decency, is a smaller location in the conceptual space that theism in general.
Happy New Year, agnostics, atheists and theists alike. At least we can all agree on the calendar... or can we?
Stumble It!
Comments
Why agnostics like myself ... do not take any position on whether God exists or not, because we think it is simply an unanswerable question.
breath of fresh air in a stuffy debate.
-Deist
Posted by: sharon | December 30, 2006 11:08 PM
To the same quoted section as sharon, one cannot scientifically take any position as to whether demons, fairies or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist either - while no evidence exists for them, their existence cannot be ruled out entirely.
Posted by: Daniel | December 30, 2006 11:43 PM
Well, there is another caveat in this equation.
Firstly, I agree with John Wilkins partitioning of these rather ambiguous terms (I don't know how many times I have tried to explain them). By here comes the rub (and another hour of explanation to my dearly confused family members):
One is agnostic to a abstract notion of God (an ambivalent universal intelligence that pays no attention to our insignificant corner of the universe).
However, a personal God (the God of all major religions), is by definition knowable. He is directly involved with our human affairs, be it by listening to prayers or calling for mass genocide. The fact that these types of God have left behind their knowledge in book format further cements that. Therefore, by John Wilkins partitioning, one cannot be agnostic to a personal God, as he is by definition knowable.
So the above fancy partitioning only works when one talks about a abstract God. One one wades into the territory of a God as portrayed in most (Western) religions, one is forced to either believe in him or not.
Posted by: Roland Deschain | December 31, 2006 12:00 AM
I am not agnostic to a personal God who reveals himself directly to those who ask. In my opinion, that God has been falsified by experience (mine). However, if I were a theist arguing with my non-theist self, I would qualify my claims so include the (unfalsifiable) caveat that one has to have "true faith" or something similar, and now we are back in unanswerable question territory.
A response to the Popperian notion of falsifiability was the Duhem Quine thesis proposed by Imre Lakatos. According to this, when we find a putative falsification for a claim, we are always free to (rationally) shift the failure to an ancillary claim, such as misbehaviour of the instruments or the researcher. While I think in science this cannot be indefinitely held, it can be in metaphysics, because no evidence is ultimately telling in metaphysics. If a scientific research program consistently fails to make progress empirically, then the science will be abandoned, but a religious metaphysical claim about God can always be further qualified to be protected against falsification. And there is nothing that can tell one way or the other.
For this reason, I am not agnostic about many things, as I have said before. I do disbelieve in demons and fairies, because the empirical import of their existence leads to counterfactual claims - we know that fairies do not do anything of the kind they are claimed to do. This is not true of a suitably innoculated God concept.
Since this regress of protection is infinite, I say that the question of God's existence only looks like a question; it actually has no more sense to it than "Do gronks muffnordle?" Hence, the indecideability. When you get to the realm of infinite qualification, then the issue is not live.
Posted by: John Wilkins | December 31, 2006 12:33 AM
Yeah, but can it be known whether or not god can be known?
Don't think so. And I guess that's my problem with agnosticism. It introduces a whole new argument that actually has no bearing on the existence or non-existence of god, because it adds a consideration that every atheist of deist has to deal with, and then pretends it's a separate position.
If no-one can answer on the vertical axis (is god knowable? yes/no) - and I would argue that no-one can - then agnosticism ceases to be a distinction.
Could the present state of play result from an all-powerful god who doesn't, at the moment, choose to be "knowable"? And couldn't that god, tomorrow, choose to be known?
What possible reason could you have to disregard this? It seems a much greater leap of faith than anything a devout theist can provide.
"...we know that fairies do not do anything of the kind they are claimed to do. This is not true of a suitably innoculated God concept." (my italics)
Show me one (rational) person on earth who would not agree. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious. It does not represent a distinct position.
Posted by: SmellyTerror | December 31, 2006 12:55 AM
I concede that I've spent far less time devling into such philosophical topics as yourself, John. But it seems to me that the "suitably innoculated God concept" is only innoculated by the status quo of the society in which we live; it is no more innoculated than the concept of Zeus and the Titans were in Plato's time.
But perhaps this is what you're getting at with your mention of "regression of protection," which is not a concept whose implications are familiar to me, being a casual stray into strict philosophy of science. In any case, I wasn't asking for you to qualify against every hypothetical possibility - only that you acknowledge that some superstitions are societal constructs with little basis other than the oddity of human imagination and theory of mind, while others are actually demonstrably real. The notion of a God is clearly in the former category.
If we're going to pay heed to societal norms and superstitions, that's one thing. But if we're going to pay heed to the philosophy of science (at least as I understand it, having only taken a course on it in college and some other casual reading), then we have to rely on its basic suppositions: that of naturalism, and hence, against supernaturalism.
Posted by: Daniel | December 31, 2006 1:01 AM
John, I have given my thoughts on your post here. Might as well put my own blog to good use for once. ;)
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | December 31, 2006 3:04 AM
You are saying that you are a "non-theist", but not an atheist?
Posted by: Todd Sayre | December 31, 2006 6:19 AM
Too much importance is being attributed to the question of the existence of God. As it is, we can say that God exists because a lot of people believe that He exists. This forces even those people who believe that God does not exist to react to the fact (eg: if no one believed in God, PZ Myers would write about cephalophods only).
A much more important question is WHY people believe that God exists.
Posted by: Roman Werpachowski | December 31, 2006 7:03 AM
John Wilkins says,
You aren't being told that you are an atheist simply because you claim to be an agnostic. You are an atheist because you don't believe in God. You don't practice any of the religions and you don't comport your life as if there were a God(s). Therefore, you are a non-believer in practice. So you actually do take a position on whether there is a God or not, in spite of your denials.
You have already made the personal decision not to believe in God. Philisophically, you maintain that it is impossible to prove a negative but that's something that every rational being accepts.
So, if an outside observer were to describe the worldview of John Wilkins, the term "agnostic atheist" would carry a lot more truthful information than just "agnostic." We are all agnostics--that's not a useful bit of information. What we need to know is whether you believe in God in spite of your philosophical position that God is unknowable. The answer is "no," therefore you are not a theist. You are an a-theist.
Posted by: Larry Moran | December 31, 2006 7:08 AM
Larry: yes, I made a personal decision to abandon my belief in God some thirty years ago. At first I thought the alternative view was to therefore deny that a God existed - after all, if I didn't accept that there was a God, the only other view was that there was not. Hence, I must be an atheist. After a while, it dawned on me that this was only true if the binary choice "God exists|God does not exist" were the only alternatives on offer. But if the issue is framed differently, that ceases to be the case. [I will happily accept that I am an agnostic with respect to theism. I am not an agnostic atheist any more than I am an agnostic theist. So treat the term "agnostic" here as an abbreviation for "agnostic WRT theism". That leaves out agnostic about fairies or dark matter...]
Smelly, Todd, Tyler, Roman and Daniel: of course the framing of the debate as a debate, as a live issue, is socially and historically relative. I do not have to have a position on the existence of, say, wood spirits as believed by Oggists of the late Pliocene, because that is lost to the debate of today. All questions and all debates are set against the state of play in some social and cultural tradition. As I have said before, Socrates was an atheist to the Athenians because he didn't accept the state gods. To us he's a theist. Some questions shift meaning over time.
My general point is indeed, as Tyler says on his blog, that the God-question can't be answered and therefore is not a question as such (although he seems to miss the point that I think that. It follows from the point that the God-question is not decideable). It's time to put it to bed as a philosophical issue, I believe, but I am realistic enough to know that it will remain a live issue in our tradition and others for the foreseeable future. It's enough for me to know (as I think I do) that it is a non-question. What others may think is their problem.
And finally, the play on classical etymology is no longer useful. Yes, the "a-" prefix means "without". But "atheist" has broader connotations than derivations from past languages (just as "television" does). It means, so far as I can see from the uses in standard works since Huxley, the denial of God's existence. That I do not do. Some who call themselves atheists think it doesn't mean that, and say I should be happy to be called an atheist because they are. I think they are not correct, and that I have usage on my side. I am "without God" in one sense, yes, but I am not an atheist the way the term has traditionally been used. I affirm or deny nothing about this issue. I am agnostic. Moreover, I am apathetic about it: I don't know and I don't care. Those who think they have to take a stance on the matter do care, and they do think they know something.
Posted by: John Wilkins | December 31, 2006 10:44 AM
Oh, and it's 1:45am on 1 January here. Happy new year again!
Posted by: John Wilkins | December 31, 2006 10:46 AM
None of them?
Posted by: Todd Sayre | December 31, 2006 11:40 AM
On the one hand, I think that this taxonomy covers the major bases held by "the public," i.e. by most people, and that should be good enough.
On the other hand, there are philosophers and theologians who insist on making things more complicated.
For example, Kant. Clearly he's a theist of some kind. But what kind? He doesn't think that there can be any knowledge (Erkenntnis) that is non-spatio-temporal. So there can be no knowledge of God. But is he then being inconsistent? He is not guilty of internal inconsistency, because (a) he distinguishes between epistemic commitments and practical/moral commitments and (b) he argues that belief in God is a moral commitment, not an epistemic one.
Granted, there aren't many Kantians running around these days. And perhaps this point really isn't germane, because the nuances of philosophical reflection are opaque to most of the rest of us. But I dispute that it need be that way. On the contrary: I think that the reflections and writings of Hume, Kant, James, Dewey, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Tillich are not owned by professional academics. They are owned by all of us, and they can and should be present in this debate.
(By the way: I'm an apatheist.)
Posted by: Carl Sachs | December 31, 2006 12:40 PM
John,
The point of my post is that you call yourself an agnostic when your position is indistinguishable (from what I can tell) from non-cognitivist atheism. Thus I don't understand why you are so stubborn about calling yourself an atheist. May have been a bit long winded on my blog, but that's all I was saying.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | December 31, 2006 1:34 PM
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | December 31, 2006 1:47 PM
SmellyTerror wrote: What possible reason could you have to disregard this?
There isn't any evidence for it. That's why.
Posted by: speedwell | December 31, 2006 5:35 PM
Tyler - as a guess, I'd say that John doesn't want the baggage that people associate with the term "atheist" - actually I can relate this to a friend who calls himself a "witch" as opposed to a "wiccan", but he takes the baggage head on rather than avoid it. Maybe I'm wrong, and only John can answer that, but John's idea that an atheist is only someone who "denies God" is pretty funny, since the entire population of Buddhists, Hindu, Shinto, Taoist, Confuscian, Animists - hell, all the pagans and many others I forget or am unaware of - are atheists. By this line:
"It means, so far as I can see from the uses in standard works since Huxley, the denial of God's existence."
it seems he accepts the Christian usage of the term to describe anyone who doesn't believe as they do. Now, since I do not believe in any kind of god, how can I deny what doesn't exist? Denial of God implies that there is a God to be denied. If I do not believe in Santa Claus, but admit that there can be some somewhere, am I an agnostic? I haven't read much philosophy, but I reading George Smiths book convinced me that agnostic was not the correct term, since there are those who believe in a god but also say that there is no way of knowing for sure. If that's not an agnostic theist, I'm not sure what is. His point of separating the aspects of knowledge and belief seems better than conflating the two.
Of course, this all sounds like the rows in taxonomy between the "splitters" and "lumpers" (to use terms from my college days).
Posted by: Badger3k | December 31, 2006 5:37 PM
John, thanks for taking this on again despite the inevitable attempts to dragoon us agnostics into the ranks of atheists. I like this explanation a lot and will be liberally taking ... er ... making reference to it.
Dennett has an interesting definition of "atheist" (though he may just have been playing a bit fast and loose with term) in his book Breaking the Spell. He says (p. 245):
Now I doubt such a Person exists and have decided that, even if he/she/it does, it would make no difference in the way I'd live my life. But I deny that humans can know whether or not it exists by the only method that gives something like "truth", i.e. empiricism and, therefore, I think it is reasonable (though not necessarily reasoned) for others to believe in such a Person, pray to it, give it credit and blame.
Of course, like most things, there is a spectrum of reasonableness and the attempts by atheists to render the question in stark dichotomies is mere rhetoric.
Happy New Year!
Posted by: John Pieret | December 31, 2006 8:01 PM
I've followed the debates on this whole Agnostic/Atheist thing for some time mostly as a combatant on the Agnostic side. However I've reached what should have been an obvious conclusion. Agnostics and Atheist hold the same views on god. Or perhaps more exactly an atheist and an agnostic are equally likely to agree regarding a statement about god as are either with one of their fellows. The problem is they are using different definitions.
Agnostics point to TH Huxley who coined the term "agnostic" for their definition (http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE5/Agn.html). Agnostics say they can't prove there is or isn't a god so they logically call themselves agnostic. Agnostics say they aren't atheist because they don't have faith that there is no god.
Atheist on the other hand point to etymology or a similar source for their definition. Atheists say they are merely "without god." Atheists say they aren't agnostic because the burden of proof is on the theist and that calling themselves agnostic would be giving the theist the benefit of the doubt.
Now if you examine these positions you will discover they agree on all the relevant points. Both groups believe the likelihood of god existing is so low that it isn't worth considering. Neither group claims to have faith in the non-existence of god nor claims they can prove the non-existence of god.
If we would merely ask the other what they believe and look for differences we would find them lacking. Instead we assume that those who use the other label must use our definition of that label, which is patently wrong.
Posted by: AgnosticOracle | December 31, 2006 8:15 PM
So why not use both - agnostic atheist?
Posted by: Badger3k | December 31, 2006 8:46 PM
Edit - I just realized, I forgot the smiley. It should read:
"So why not use both - agnostic atheist? ;P" - to get the proper intention of my post. Seriously, these type of discussions strike me as pretty pointless. On the one hand, what you do call yourself does mean something, but at the same time, I find labels to be annoying and rarely accurate in any real sense, as most people are more complex than the simple stereotypes that people think of when they hear a label. Ehhh....
Posted by: Badger3k | December 31, 2006 10:01 PM
Just to provide some definitional clarifications, my usages of the terms is intended as follows:
Agnosticism: God's existence is a valid question, but the answer is unknown.
Non-Cognitivism: God's existence is a non-question because it has no decidable answer.
Now, and atheist can be either of these. I take the word "atheist" to be like the word "amoral". That is, anything that lacks the trait of being "theist" is by default atheist. Whether one considers God's existence a valid question (and/or proposition), one either believes or disbelieves. Thus one is either a theist or an atheist.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | December 31, 2006 10:12 PM
Merry perihelion to all!
I've always considered myself an agnostic for the reasons Wilkins gives, and also because it was my family's tradition. However, in much contemporary usage an atheist is anyone who does not believe in a god, which certainly includes agnostics.
Dawkins and PZ aren't comprehensive god-deniers, just non-believers. They do argue that there are good reasons to deny the existence of certain familiar conceptions of god.
"Atheist" is an edgier, more confrontational label than "agnostic", and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Of course it might just mean that agnosticism needs a higher profile and better marketing.
Posted by: bad Jim | January 1, 2007 12:24 AM
I'm not sure John read my post, because his answer had absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote.
What I’m saying is that all atheists would - surely? - have to agree that the question cannot be resolved, because they’ll never be able to prove the non-existance of god. So all atheists are also agnostic - they don’t think the question can ever be resolved.
So you can’t say “I’m not an athiest, I’m agnostic”. All atheists are agnostic. It's a necessary component of atheism that it can never be resolved.
In fact, the only way you can be sure that the question cannot be resolved is if you believe god does not exist. If god did, it's always possible that he could choose to reveal himself. Ask any theist, however "agnostic", whether he thinks it's *possible* that god might reveal himself, and surely that person must answer yes. God is not god if he's incapable of doing so (surely?).
Posted by: SmellyTerror | January 1, 2007 8:11 AM
siorry to double post - and to do it in a re-post as well. I should just start a blog and link this sort of thing. Please feel free to delete it if you like...
...but I wanted to answer all of those who think this is a non-argument, who think the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" are interchangable:
But it (agnosticism) becomes damaging: where it is placed beside atheism it makes a statement about atheism that is false. "I'm not an atheist, I'm agnostic - because I doubt, and because I'm not anti-religion" - hence implying that atheists do not doubt and are anti-religious. Read John's post (http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/11/on_learned_ignorance.php) - he's saying just that. By perpetuating this myth of difference between atheism and agnosticism, agnostics are - in effect - attacking atheism, making it seem dogmatic where it is not.
The unbelieving atheist point of view - the popular one at least - seems to be "Neither of us believe in god, but *I* am not a zealot about it." How is that fair? How does the implication that atheists are zealots helpful to anyone?
To use an example I posted once before: "I'm not a miserly, money-grubbing, evil Jew. I shall be henceforth known as a Goodjew." Do you see how this statement - this whole position - not only creates a false distinction between the speaker and his (former) group, but perpetuates a myth about that group? The growth of a Goodjew movement must surely be a concern to the Jews left behind - even though the two groups are the same, one group is (falsely) claiming a difference that makes the other look bad. Their very existence is an accusation. Should all the Jews rename themselves Goodjews? Or are they right to be a little pissed off at these Goodjews who, instead of fighting against prejudice, have capitulated and - in the process - made life harder for the old-style Jews?
That's why I *stopped* calling myself agnostic. Atheism is *not* a faith, and implying that it is is irresponsible.
Posted by: SmellyTerror | January 1, 2007 8:33 AM
Dawkins and PZ aren't comprehensive god-deniers, just non-believers.
I'm sorry, mere lip service to the inability to prove the nonexistence of god is not enough to take them out of that camp. When have they ever made any distinction between "superstition" (one of their favorite words) and any religious belief? Dawkins dismisses the whole of theology as "fairyology" and other similar slurs. But if you think there is someone more on the god-denier side of the spectrum than they are, I'd be interested in knowing who they are.
... in much contemporary usage an atheist is anyone who does not believe in a god
This "contemporary usage" is only coming from the edges of the spectrum of belief, however -- hard-core antibelievers on one side and the hard-core "godless materialism is the root of all evil" crowd on the other. They share much in common. In this case, they share a single fallacy of the excluded middle.
Atheist" is an edgier, more confrontational label than "agnostic"
Which is a practical difference between the people who are trying to hijack the word and us agnostics. As far as I can tell, all of them are angry at religion. Me, I get angry at people, who sometimes use religion as an excuse to be ... well ... people. As long as they want to be angry at religion, I want a different word to describe me.
However, etymology will go where it will. But make no mistake, the attempt to recast the word "atheist" is just Newspeak in action. I know that my position is substantially different than Larry Moran's and Dawkins' and PZ's. If they succeed in changing the word, we agnostics will just have to come up with a new one.
Letssee ... "Brights" is already taken, isn't it? ...
Posted by: John Pieret | January 1, 2007 8:43 AM
Dawkins dismisses the whole of theology as "fairyology" and other similar slurs.
Are you saying that agnosticism gives theology a higher status than fairyology? Surely if your position is that a thing is unknowable, and this body of work is describing that thing, isn't that body of work unsustainable? For fairies just as it is for god.
What exactly do you believe?
As far as I can tell, all of them are angry at religion. ... As long as they want to be angry at religion, I want a different word to describe me.
Ah yes, that ol' straw-man version of atheism...
You know, John, that whether or not you are angry does not change whether or not you believe in god. Atheism describes a person who does not believe in god. It does not say anything about whether or not that person is angry, or militant, or strident, or evangelical. If that's what you want to call someone, say it! Don't use "atheism" in the most bigoted way possible, then discover you need to distance yourself from your own prejudice.
If the difference between what you believe and atheism is anger at religion, then there is no difference.
Posted by: SmellyTerror | January 1, 2007 9:49 AM
Surely if your position is that a thing is unknowable, and this body of work is describing that thing, isn't that body of work unsustainable?
By what standard is it "unsustainable" simply because it is unknowable? Science cannot be logically demonstrated to deliver "truth." That doesn't stop us from using it.
John has already given a good explanation why the question of God's existence/nature is not the same as the existence/nature of fairies but maybe we shouldn't let that get in the way of a handy false dichotomy.
If the difference between what you believe and atheism is anger at religion, then there is no difference.
There is nothing that does not fit in some private definition. Nor is there anything that can be done to force anyone to read what someone says if they don't want to. (Hint: check out who "all of them" refers to.)
Posted by: John Pieret | January 1, 2007 10:17 AM
By what standard is it unsustainable??? You considered the comparsion with fairyology to be a 'slur', so clearly you think there's a problem with the concept. You tell me why it's unsustainable!
And, again, does agnosticism grant a special status to religion? On what grounds? What is the difference between fairyology and religion?
You refer to John's argument: "I do not have to have a position on the existence of, say, wood spirits as believed by Oggists of the late Pliocene, because that is lost to the debate of today." But isn't "not having a position" a pretty good description of agnosticism? So he's saying he *is* agnostic towards such things, isn't he?
Actually, it seems like reasoning for being agnostic towards fairyology, but not to be towards religion. Religion is *not* "lost to the debate of today".
(Hint: check out who "all of them" refers to.)
Wait, are you saying you *weren't* talking about atheists now?
Well, let's see John. You further mentioned "them": As long as they want to be angry at religion, I want a different word to describe me.
Oh, whatever could that word be, John? Whatever could be the word that describes "them"?
No, seriously, tell us. It might be nice for you to stop "hinting". It makes you look like you have no idea what you're talking about.
So far you seem to be backing up my arguments nicely, and I don't think that's what you're intending.
(Sorry for hijacking the thread. I'll bugger off until tomorrow).
Posted by: SmellyTerror | January 1, 2007 11:03 AM
It might be nice for you to stop "hinting".
Do I have to parse it for you too? The humor is obviously beyond you.
As to the rest, I did not use the term "unsustainable", which is why I asked you to define it. I don't know that fairyology is "unsustainable". I do know that it is not a "live question" and dragging fairies into the discussion of the kind of theology under discussion is just cheap rhetoric on Dawkins' part.
Posted by: John Pieret | January 1, 2007 11:23 AM
Defining social groups by formal characteristics such as beliefs has its limitations. I prefer a natural history approach. The atheists on public access T.V. and members of many schools of philosophy disbelieve in God just as marsupial wolves and placental wolves feature big sharp teeth, but the groups have different ancestors and differ in other ways as well, especially under the hood.
There's no more an essence of atheism than there is an essence of "parasite." At best we're dealing with a guild, not a genus.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | January 1, 2007 12:30 PM
Words like athiest and agnostic have simple definitions(!) in theory (there is no god/I don't know if god exists or not). Unfortunately the words carry a lot of nuance depending on the context and social group or culture using them.
I can see no way of nailing the definitions down as language has this way of wriggling about as time passes.
All I can suggest is that when full understanding is important we try using concrete descriptive phrases rather than single words.
As an example:
1) I consider myself to be free of belief in personal god(s) and have no need to challenge believers unless their actions (potentially) affect me.
2) I consider the existence of a 'impersonal creator of the universe' to be probably unknowable.
Posted by: Bunjo | January 1, 2007 7:15 PM
John Pieret,
By what standard is it "unsustainable" simply because it is unknowable? Science cannot be logically demonstrated to deliver "truth." That doesn't stop us from using it.
We use science because of it's demonstrated effectiveness in producing useful results. It has almost always been recognized that the conclusions of science are imperfect and provisional in nature. Theology doesn't even get that far.
In any case, why does one have to logically "prove" that science delivers "truth"? How can one logically prove that a logical deduction delivers truth? If a methodology is incumbent to recursively prove itself, no methodology ends up being valid.
The presuppositionalist nature of theism demands one to assume that a god-concept is worth talking about in the first place. I've seen no reason to think that it is, perhaps you can provide one if you are convinced, as you seem to be, of it's validity.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 1, 2007 9:18 PM
Tyler -
I don't disagree with that assessment of science as the best form of knowledge. However, simply saying that theology is not science is not the same as saying it is disproven, worthless or, at its root, any more illogical than science. You have to work harder at your argument than that.
Nor is your personal opinion about the worthiness of discussing God's existence and nature a particularly persuasive argument, no matter how it happens to line up with my own opinion.
As to the reason to consider it a live question, I've given it before: the fact that billions of people, including any number of them personally known to me to be honest, intelligent people, report their personal experience of God. Note that this is not an argumentum ad populorum, since I am not claiming that the number of these reports prove that they are true or that God exists; merely that it is a phenomenon that needs explanation. And, given what I and John have set out above, I don't see any reason why other people may not chose to approach the question by means other than science.
Posted by: John Pieret | January 1, 2007 10:06 PM
OK, I have broadband access at last. So I can respond to some of these very interesting (and so far uncharacteristically, of this debate, well mannered) comments.
John's and my point that the question is "live" here does not presuppose that the question is decideable. My taxonomy is founded on the claim that agnostics think it is not. Atheists, at least those who are perhaps loudest in this debate, such as Dawkins, claim is is decideable, at least to the extent that the weight of evidence can tell against God's existence. Sure, they are not absolutist about this, but that doesn't mean they don't come out with a, as Tyler puts it, "cognitivist" position. All knowledge is fallible and limited (except a God's knowledge, but that would be a petitio), so the fact that atheists allow that they can't prove the nonexistence of gods doesn't imply they don't have a knowledge claim here. Agnostics as I have defined or described them lack any such knowledge claim. We think that no amount of evidence can make a god's existence or nonexistence likely, or justify any knowledge claim one way or the other.
This is not a binary choice. I am afairyist, because fairies as described have properties with empirical consequences, like being photographable by young Victorian gels, which are more parsimoniously explained as frauds. But I suppose fairyists might innoculate their conception of fairies in a way that approaches, say, Odinist deities. At that point, when they are empirically insulated I would say they are gods anyway. So some conceptions of nonnatural agents or entities can be rejected for good epistemic reasons, even if it is always possible to innoculate them from falsification in a general sense.
Why I think the question is live is for the same reason as John - I know many smart (often smarter than I am, which isn't hard) individuals who believe in a God. On questioning they have a conception of God that is immune from empirical disconfirmation, and which makes no claims about science that an atheist would object to (other than their view being coherent with a scientific worldview). Why I think the question is irrelevant to knowledge claims is exactly the same point - no evidence counts one way or the other.
Since the faith of these theists is not based on the sort of crude apologetics one encounters from creationists and the like, but on a choice without any epistemic support, it follows that rejection of that choice - active rejection, not just by default - is likewise not based on epistemic considerations. It's not a faith" in the sense of a doctrinal choice; but it is an act of faith in the sense of a decision based on no evidence.
I can sense PZ and others immediately bridling - after all The God Delusion is an attempt to use evidence to dismiss God's existence. I would argue that it attacks an easy target - the simplistic theism of evangelicals and fundamentalists, Islamists and Hindu exclusivists, etc. But that is not the only target. As a philosopher, I was taught to take the very best target to attack, not the simplistic and crude ones, and give it the most charitable interpretation possible. That Best of All Possible Theisms (TBOAPT) is not dismissible via evidence. In my epistmeic model, if you can't answer a question about the existence of something on the basis of evidence and reasons, then it is a shell of a question. Hence agnosticism.
I need to distinguish between atheism and agnosticism because there are distinct philosophical choices and moves made in each case. If anyone is inclined to say of TBOAPT that the evidence weighs against that rather than Jerry Fallwell's or William Dembski's simpleminded theism, then they are an atheist. If they say that the evidence weighs in favour of it (even if it is subjective or moral evidence), then they are a theist. Otherwise they are an agnostic, if they have anything to say about it at all.
Back in the 19thC much was made of The Unknowable (capital letters included). I never fully grasped why. If it's Unknowable, it's unknowable. Nothing more needs saying. But everyone seems to want to make claims in favour of what they believe, I guess.
I believe I'll go make a coffee now.
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 2, 2007 12:01 AM
Many commenters on these threads recognize that "God" doesn't mean the same thing for different groups of believers. The thesis of the non-existence of God also means different things to different non-believers and not just in regard to whether they assert that they know there is no god or simply maintain a level of skepticism functionally equivalent to atheism. Atheism has a different role in the economy of the thoughts and practices of different groups. Which is why, come to think of it, the traditional theist counter argument about the crimes of various atheists such as Lenin or Stalin seem somewhat misplaced. Communists and rationalist atheists indeed share a disbelief in God, but the disbelief is analogous not homologous. Indeed, since Communism is, cladistically speaking, a form of Christianity in much the same way that that pelicans are a variety of dinosaurs, the atheism of Marxists tends to be a kind of transformed religious faith with very specific, traceable ties to traditional theology via Feuerbach, Hegel, the German mystics, and others. (Key shared primitive character: an obsession with mediation.)
If "God" were a credible hypothesis in any serious contemporary epistemologial inquiry, where the various notions of his existence or non existence come from would be irrelevant. However, since "God" cannot even be represented in the terminology of empirical science or mathematics and contemporary philosophical versions of the concept are so vague and inconsequential as to be negligible, it makes sense to focus on the sociology of the believers and nonbelievers since that at least has real political and human importance. (Obviously loads of people--atheists as well as theists-- don't share my dismissive attitude about the importance of the question of the existence or nonexistence of God. Peace be with you. Don't pay me any mind.)
Posted by: Jim Harrison | January 2, 2007 2:52 AM
John Pieret,
I would agree that simply stating that theology is "not science" is not enough of an argument. It is certainly not one that I have made, though some have interpreted various statements of mine in such a fashion. What I critique about theology is actually two-fold: 1.) I argue that it's presuppositionalist nature prevents objective analysis of it's claims and 2.) that many of it's claims defy knowledge gained in objectively transparent pursuits like science (as Christians argue about whether evolution tosses out Biblical creation, no one seems to feel it imperative to tackle whether or not basic physiology and developmental biology toss out the virgin birth).
John Wilkins,
TBOAPT is a neat abstraction. I have had thoughts floating in my head for a while now about such an idea. It seems such a concept manifests in two distinct forms:
1.) The lowest common denominator theism: the most basic deism, that there is a super-intelligence that had some hand in creating the universe.
2.) The completely unfalsifiable theism: usually an ad hoc rationalization of some sort, Ken Miller's arguments in Finding Darwin's God fall into this category.
The problem I see with such claims is that, while they are internally logically sound, they seem to feel free to discard basic epistemological rules universally adhered to elsewhere. While distinctions between science and theology are neither here nor there at this point (at least in this thread) I still don't see why theologians get to formulate claims that, with a simple change of the respective discipline's terminology, would be recognized as sloppy and intellectually irresponsible.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 2, 2007 3:13 AM
The problem I see with such claims is that, while they are internally logically sound, they seem to feel free to discard basic epistemological rules universally adhered to elsewhere.
This might be a bit vague, so allow to provide a preemptive clarification: By "internally logically sound" I mean "not inherently contradictory". Such language is intentionally meant to gloss over the details discussed in my posts on non-cognitivism.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 2, 2007 3:17 AM
Jim, I meant to say, I also agree with the cladistic view of conceptual development, and agree too that this determines the content of the knowledge claims made by various traditions. Marxism and other communisms have inherited the context and contrasts of Christian and philosophical theisms, which in turn defines what they deny or affirm about this.
A thought: those who, like myself and Ron Numbers (see the post two after this one), have come out of religious belief often want to retain a legitimacy for those we left back in our faith communities, and will tend to be agnostics rather than atheists (unless they had a really bad experience in those communities). Others, who are raised atheist or who did or do have a bad time, tend to denigrate or deprecate the rationality of that which they are in reaction to.
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 2, 2007 3:47 AM
Tyler -
In your blog entry and your last post you said (if I may synthesize them somewhat) that
You use the very apt analogy to the claim that "Mozart made beautiful music."
All of which raises the question, "what standard are you using?" While you agree that simply stating that theology is not science is not sufficient to disqualify religion as a serious topic, what are your complaints above but that religion is not subject to the objective process of science? John and I agree that it is not (at least in the case of TBOAPT). What we don't agree is that it has to be subject to scientific rigor in order to be a live question.
And, by the way, did Mozart make beautiful music?
Posted by: John Pieret | January 2, 2007 6:49 AM
Of course he did. The Dies Irae movement of the Requiem is sublime.
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 2, 2007 6:56 AM
A thought: those who, like myself and Ron Numbers (see the post two after this one), have come out of religious belief often want to retain a legitimacy for those we left back in our faith communities, and will tend to be agnostics rather than atheists (unless they had a really bad experience in those communities).
I agree with this. At least it is true that my experience of religion was hardly oppressive (despite the Jesuits and all) and, in the liberal American Catholic Church of the 1960s, there was no truck with irrationality. Besides, as my wife keeps telling me: "You can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy."
Posted by: John Pieret | January 2, 2007 7:03 AM
I resent this attempt to dragoon me into the ranks of agnostics merely because you can invent a concept of god that is untestable and inaccessible and pretty much irrelevant to how the world works.
Posted by: PZ Myers | January 2, 2007 12:31 PM
I don't fit.
I was raised as a Lutheran. I did not have a bad experience with it, and in fact actually liked the people I went to church and sunday school with. The doctrines were not oppressive. I was a choir boy, I was an acolyte, and I went through a year and a half of confirmation classes...and it was actually those classes that confirmed to me that religion was all a heap of superstitious twaddle. I left with no regrets and no problems and no bad feelings towards any of the people in the church.
I still think religion is a load of irrational crap.
I think the Johns here are just making the standard "atheists are all angry and hate religion for emotional reasons" fallacy. I think it's more accurate to say that agnostics are atheists who haven't managed to purge themselves of irrational sentiment for old myths.
Posted by: PZ Myers | January 2, 2007 12:43 PM
I resent this attempt to dragoon me into the ranks of agnostics ...
Whatever makes you think we'd want you?
;-)
Posted by: John Pieret | January 2, 2007 12:54 PM
I think the Johns here are just making the standard "atheists are all angry and hate religion for emotional reasons" fallacy.
I'm not and the other John is usually more reasonable than me. Still, there is no denying that more than a few of the people who, for example, post at your blog, are angry at religion and some openly complain about how they feel they were abused by it and/or the parents who forced them into it.
I think it's more accurate to say that agnostics are atheists who haven't managed to purge themselves of irrational sentiment for old myths.
I'm sorry. What led you to think we were describing anything other than an emotional influence? Not everyone tries to pretend that they are 100% rational.
Posted by: John Pieret | January 2, 2007 1:06 PM
Yes, you can find a number of people who are angry at religion (and who can blame them? A lifetime of lies is an awful thing), but it doesn't support the generalization that was made about atheists. It's not just me, but I think if you talk to Larry Moran or Richard Dawkins, two other examples of godless militancy, I think you'll find that they aren't particularly scarred by childhood exposure to religion either.
I'm not putting up a pretense of rationality, either. I'm still always amazed that people can look at those appalling conglomerations of weirdness called Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and not break out in laughter.
Posted by: PZ Myers | January 2, 2007 2:31 PM
Yes, you can find a number of people who are angry at religion ...
Which was the "generalization" that was being made (as in "often" and "tends" instead of "always" or "is caused") and the speculation was about why that is. Maybe the speculation is off base but your reaction is revealing in and of itself.
Posted by: John Pieret | January 2, 2007 5:11 PM
And besides, I wasn't necessarily saying that you had to be raised that way to be an angry atheist - it is enough to have lived through the intolerance of a dominant religious consensus. Until fairly recently, Australians had no experience of this the way, say, a Midwest American has. So if we generate angry atheists, it is almost certain they were raised in some strict and intolerant religious tradition. Paul is in what, from a world perspective, is a rather unusual case in "Christendom" these days.
And it was just a speculation...
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 2, 2007 6:10 PM
For the record, it's perfectly possible to like God without believing in Him, just as lots of folks are fond of various other fictional characters—I have long had the hots for Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice, for example, though hooking up with an imaginary woman would certainly count as a mixed marriage. I'm also rather fond of at least some of the divine figures that went into the composite supreme deity of the Jews and Christians. Thus J's Yahweh is an engaging, if alarming, personality; and I like El, the prototypical Ancient of Days, who I think of as a sort of Semitic Uncle Remus, though he looks pretty take-charge as he touches Adam in the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | January 2, 2007 7:42 PM
"Often"? "Tends"? This has not been demonstrated in any way. I made a counterpoint: that a few people you tend to bring up as examples of those angry intolerant militant evangelical atheists don't seem to fit the generalization at all. Is it that the generalization is remarkably weak, or is that that my examples of angry atheists are poor ones who aren't really that angry after all?
Posted by: PZ Myers | January 2, 2007 9:52 PM
... a few people you tend to bring up as examples of those angry intolerant militant evangelical atheists ...
Meaning you, Larry Moran and Richard Dawkins?
When did I do that? Or John?
Again, your reaction is telling.
Posted by: John Pieret | January 2, 2007 10:17 PM
You've got no data and you're going to ignore the counterexamples; it's your stereotype and you're sticking by it no matter what, I guess.
I'm not sure what you think my reaction is telling you. I hope it's not that the leprechauns are getting ready to invade the moon, but it's beginning to sound that way. It should tell you that someone who knows a lot of atheists found the generalization baffling and a poor fit to his experience.
Posted by: PZ Myers | January 2, 2007 10:59 PM
Paul! Deep breath! Count to ten...
All I did was throw out a speculation as to the motivations of those who take one of the two positions that are clearly in play in these posts and responses. I'm not even critical of those who think that religion is a totally malign influence on society - it's a very valid position given recent history. I think it is wrong, but hey, that's why we have blogs to debate these issues.
In making that speculation, I wasn't suggesting that all and only those who have a rough experience of religion are "angry atheists" (is that like the Angry Flower?). Obviously there will be many people who are angry just on principle, and many who are the victims of religious intolerance and abuse who are more forgiving. That strikes me as a matter of individual psychology rather than essential properties of atheism. But even if there are many who have had good experiences of religion and yet think the harsher form of atheism is right, the "falsification" of the generalisation is goign to need a much broader and more strictly controlled data set than the anecdotes of you or me.
I made the generalisation because it matches my experience, which is why it is speculation, and because I live in a society that is broadly apathetic about religion, at least for the last few decades, and so the instances are less likely to be swamped by the all-encompassing religiosity of a culture like yours. But it's a rough generalisation, as all these things are. No need to go on the defensive, as I'm not making an ad hominem argument about your view here, just wondering out loud if perhaps there's a causal correlation. I don't even have a p value...
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 2, 2007 11:21 PM
And I am not assuming you're making an ad hominem argument -- all I'm saying is that in my experience, the correlation doesn't hold up. I wasn't insulted or offended, nor was I planning to call you out to a duel at dawn.
Man, I must have some scary reputation. I disagree with something, I toss out a few counterexamples, and you guys are reacting as if I were turning green and hulking up on you.
Posted by: PZ Myers | January 2, 2007 11:47 PM
Well, you do it once, and we all have reason to be scared.
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 2, 2007 11:48 PM
In the midst of other things, this thread seems to have taken off in another direction without me. But I'll continue anyway.
What we don't agree is that it has to be subject to scientific rigor in order to be a live question.
Well, not a priori. But inquiry as we understand it always starts with questions and, given a certain methodology, reaches conclusions. I would think that theology should have a coherent explanation of what it is studying, how it reaches conclusions, etc., before it is respected as a discipline.
As for being a "live question", I would say that such an issue stems from my problems with theology. Properly speaking I am non-cognitivist because I have yet to understand, in most cases, what the hell the theologians are talking about when they say "God".
And, by the way, did Mozart make beautiful music?
I used that as an example of how a sentence can have the syntactic structure of a factual statement when it yields no factual solution (sort of like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"). I think that the thought is better communicated as "I find the music Mozart made beautiful." Which is a factual statement of one's subjective experience.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 3, 2007 12:10 AM
A book I have often cited here and elsewhere is
Garfinkel, Alan (1981), Forms of explanation: rethinking the questions in social theory. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press.
Garfinkel talks about "explanatory relativity" in which an explanation is an answer to a question in science. The question sets up the "contrast space" of alternative possible answers. I generalised this, once (in my first ever paper) to "semantic spaces" in which each question invites the selection of a coordinate in the space (and on Garfinkelian lines, the question restricts the range of coordinates allowable for the answer).
In science, allowable answers require evidence that might be found in their favour - they are empirically decideable. Other fields (such as engineering) also have empirical input to decide questions, but theology uses a quite different set of criteria (the Greek from which "criterion" is taken is "krisis", or judgement. Unsurprisingly, so is "crisis").
Externally, what those criteria are look sociological - what suits the political purposes of intra- and inter-denominational interests. But internally, I can report from experience, the criteria include "holy inspiration", consistency with some interpretation of the holy writings (an interesting treatise could be written, and probably has been, on the role of holy writings to maintain the cohesion of religious traditions), and so on. These are not tests to a scientifically-minded thinker, but they certainly carry enormous weight to a believer.
If we are not to commit a petitio, we cannot say straight off that this is not rational of them. They would all agree that fundamental commitments are not rational, I think, but they would say they are being rational thereafter. If you disagree, then you are in the position of one dogma attacking another, from their own perspective.
I do think that the scientific manner of deciding questions is the only workable one so far encountered, but if you think the question is a live one, there's no non-question-begging way to deny theirs is workable for them. For that reason, I think that the theism question is live, but not a real question, as there's no external way to decide one way or the other.
Posted by: John Wilkins | January 3, 2007 12:45 AM
John Wilkins,
From what I can glean from your description of the books thesis, it seems that theology is much like an "if X, then Y" endeavor. That is, assuming the core beliefs are true, what follows? One can no doubt forge live questions in such a fashion, but it doesn't eliminate the presuppositionalist nature of the questions being asked.
Math and science are, to lesser extents, presuppositionalist (science assumes parsimony and continuity as a matter of organizing principle, for instance). But I don't think that should prevent us from analyzing the validity of theological questions in a scientific context, providing it makes similar claims (and most of the time, it does). Theology and science can be looked at in a similar way to alchemy and chemistry.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 3, 2007 2:20 AM
I don't think that should prevent us from analyzing the validity of theological questions in a scientific context, providing it makes similar claims (and most of the time, it does).
John spent a lot of time explaining the type of theology we are talking about. If you catch a theologian in an empirical statement, you can use science against him/her. If s/he doesn't, you can't. And if they mix the two, science only tells against the empiric claims, not against the others (and vice versa -- Ken Miller's science has to be judged only by its empiric content).
If you want to make the claim that there is no such animal as the type of theologian John and I are talking about, then you have an empiric claim of your own to support ... I'll just point you in the direction of the nearest Jesuit.