…and this is a 
Freethought tag-team wrestling match
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: November 15, 2006 7:00 AM, by PZ Myers
Make some popcorn.
Jason Rosenhouse says agnosticism is unjustified fence-sitting.
John Wilkins says he's still an agnostic.
Larry Moran is egging them on.
Isn't this fun? Let's see if I can get them all pissed off at me. The agnostic/atheist conflict has been simmering for a long, long time so it's always easy to fire up an argument.
I think it's a semantic issue (there, I've already irritated Larry, who has this quote on his page: "The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.") The problem is that agnosticism is really just atheism under another name (or vice versa), and the dissent arises from agnostics who assign a false certainty to atheists, and atheists who assign a mostly false hesitancy to agnostics.
I think what Wilkins is saying (he's getting philosophical over there—it makes for heavy going for us feebly philosophized types) is that because there are god-concepts that are not internally inconsistent and have not been shown to be in conflict with empirical reality, he is not going to succumb to the sense of definitiveness communicated by the word "atheist". He also places an emphasis on logical possibilities that are given some weight because he's not going to assume the methodological biases of atheists and scientists are correct.
Sure. He's right. We can't disprove all ideas about god, and when Dawkins talks about probabilities, he's applying scientific presuppositions about the way the universe works to estimate them, so it's a little bit circular.
My rebuttal, though, is that any atheist who thinks about this stuff feels exactly the same way—we acknowledge the possibilities, leave open the chance that there is some weird cosmic thing-a-ma-jig, and openly admit that we are demanding evidence for it before will give it any credence. Wilkins errs, I think, in asserting that some kind of certainty lies at the heart of any kind of thoughtful atheism. It doesn't—it's indistinguishable from what he's saying about agnosticism.
It's simpler. I don't believe in a god, therefore I'm an atheist. Wilkins says he doesn't believe in a god, but he says he's not an atheist…but it's because he's rejecting a collection of presuppositions he holds about atheists. He's draping the terms with a lot of philosophical baggage that just doesn't apply—if you don't believe, you're an atheist—and making the mistake of thinking that declaring yourself an atheist immediately closes off serious thinking about what it all means. It doesn't.
Wilkins probably likes tangling up the terms in all that baggage, since that's an occupational hazard for him, so go ahead and split hairs over the semantics. The bottom line, though, is that he and I don't believe in gods, and we'd both get burned at the stake if we made the mistake of admitting that in a medieval culture. It's all the same. My views on the matter are probably darn close to Wilkins', but I choose to use the term with historical priority and less operational ambiguity, is all.
Comments
It basically boils down to what you prefer to call yourself. If you think "atheist" implies unwarranted certainty, you might prefer the "agnostic" label. But when you realise that "atheist" does not imply any such thing, and that agnostics are atheists anyway, whether or not they wish to label themselves as such, it's just a matter of preference.
In which case you'd be a fool to call yourself anything but an "atheist". Because atheists are cool and agnostics are dweebs who tuck their sweaters into their pants.
Posted by: DaveMWW | November 15, 2006 7:17 AM
Exactly. I don't dislike agnosticism because it's wishy-washy fence-sitting and we should all take sides in the Great War Against Religiosity, I dislike agnosticism because it buys into this misrepresentation of atheism as something unjustifiably certain. It's like people who say they're "not a feminist," they "just want equal rights for women," because they associate "feminism" with the Rightist misrepresentation of it as being rabid and unreasonable.
Posted by: poke | November 15, 2006 7:25 AM
Good analogy, poke. I consider myself an agnostic atheist - I don't know for certain and don't think anyone ever can, but I certainly don't believe in any kind of deity.
Posted by: Despard | November 15, 2006 7:35 AM
Interesting. I grabbed this from Merriam-Webster Online, which is not exactly a perfect reference but isn't shabby, either.
Agnostic:
1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something
Athiest:
one who believes that there is no deity
I think they bought into it as well.
I define myself as agnostic because I am, proudly, a fence-sitter on this issue. I lack data, and I haven't definitively gone far enough to move toward atheism. This is probably coming (hey, two years to agnosticism isn't bad, give me some time). However, I neither disbelieve nor believe in an Ultimate Power of whatever form. My thoughts on the subject are still codifying and the jury still hasn't returned a verdict.
Functionally in the real world, my agnosticism is atheism. Given a real-world issue such as ID, I stand with the scientists and atheists and say, "Prove it." I am happy to pull the lever voting against restricted rights, or increased special rights for religions.
Philosophically, we each have a differing argument based on interpretation. Functionally, there is no argument. We stand at the same place.
I'm content with that for the moment.
Morpheus
Posted by: MorpheusPA | November 15, 2006 7:48 AM
You might think about the difference between those who beleive that there is no god and those that don't beleive in god. I suspect sometimes that the superstitious (god-believers) think that the former is the proper definition whereas the non superstitious (atheists) the latter.
We need names for people that believe in fairies and those that don't.
Posted by: Don Kane | November 15, 2006 7:49 AM
I think it's OK to call yourself an agnostic, and people who do so aren't fools (I'm not going to be the one to call TH Huxley a fool). I think the mistake is to make a big deal of the distinction, when there's no substance behind it.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 15, 2006 7:50 AM
Agnostics are merely latent athiests, in my book.
I like to boil down the arguments for what we do-know-can't-know arguments as an ethic of knowledge which I think is, "the ethic of respecting that which is known, acknowledging what is still unknown, and acting as if one cared about the difference".
If this ethic is considered, it would follow that there is not a goddamned bit of difference bx the two.
At a more satyrical level, An athiest is a person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others.
Posted by: dale | November 15, 2006 7:58 AM
I can certainly say that I do not believe in the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God of monotheism. I also do not believe in Shiva, Cthulu, Thor, etc. So, when asked if I believe in God by any of these traditional ideas, the answer is a firm "no." However, when someone asks me if I believe in a "higher power," my reponse is generally to ask what the hell that means. I have no idea what a "higher power" or "something greater" might be, and as far as I can tell from talking to most people who ask, neither do they. So, I don't think the question is a reasonable one to ask. I think this is roughly what Wilkins was saying (apologies to him if I am wrong). As to whether that makes me an atheist or agnostic, I don't really know. I guess it just depends on which word I like better (still haven't decided).
Posted by: Tim | November 15, 2006 8:03 AM
It's that "latent" that I object to. There is a world of (probably philosophical) difference between "I know that Not-X" and "I don't know that X or Not-X". The former is a denial of some claim X. The latter is saying that the speaker has no knowledge either way. To say that an agnostic is the same as an atheist is to claim that knowing that Not-X is the same as not knowing either X or Not-X. That's just fallacious.
To assert that atheism is the same as agnosticism (philosophically) is to privilege the theist claim in order to deny it. Agnostics don't do that - they don't think that X is worth arguing over, because it cannot be resolved non-circularly. Sure, PZ Glyph and I both act much the same (although I'm not in the business of trying to convince folk that there's something to argue over). But there remains a sensible definitional difference. Maybe some atheists are really agnostic about this. The ones I call "vocal atheists", however, want to gather me into their circle against my will. And I'm really not there.
Posted by: John Wilkins | November 15, 2006 8:07 AM
I have to take issue with what seems to be the primary claim of those who consider themselves agnostic, that being that internally consistent ideas that are not empirically accessible present insoluble problems. Or, put more simply, you can't disprove X through empirical means, so you have to sit on the fence.
I don't think either theists or agnostics have demonstrated that talk about God(s) and the supernatural in general is even justified. It seems to me that super-nature is a contrived category of things that are wholly partitioned from nature and thus not empirically testable. So since there is no way of knowing by scientific and rationalistic means whether supernatural things exist, we need to be agnostic with regard to their existence.
But why stop there? Why not create a third category, call it "hyper-nature", which is wholly partitioned from both nature and super-nature? You can talk about hyper-nature just as easily as you can super-nature, but that ignores the fact that I just pulled it out of my ass and haven't demonstrated any particular worth of the category.
And it doesn't even stop there, as taking the above premise in summation implies that there is an infinite amount of things that can be made up that are not empirically testable. Are agnostics also agnostic about every single one? Or would I be right to say that a scientific mindset precludes giving credence to shit people just made up with no appeal to methods of rational inquiry?
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 15, 2006 8:17 AM
I've always considered myself an agnostic atheist. Agnostic in knowledge of God and atheistic in belief of God.
Posted by: Todd Adamson | November 15, 2006 8:18 AM
"To say that an agnostic is the same as an atheist is to claim that knowing that Not-X is the same as not knowing either X or Not-X. That's just fallacious."
What is fallacious, as has been pointed out repeatedly, is your definition of atheism as 'knowing that there is no God'. I have yet to encounter a single atheist who makes this claim.
If 'knowing' is a necessary condition of atheism, then surely it follows that 'knowing' is a necessary condition of theism. The only true theists are those who 'know' for certain that their God exists. Which means that the only true theists are the rabid fundamentalists.
All those 'moderate' Christians, Muslims, Hindus etc, who acknowledge the possibility that they might be wrong, are just as agnostic as Huxley and Wilkins.
Posted by: Ruth | November 15, 2006 8:23 AM
I can certainly say that I do not believe in the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God of monotheism. I also do not believe in Shiva, Cthulu, Thor, etc. So, when asked if I believe in God by any of these traditional ideas, the answer is a firm "no." However, when someone asks me if I believe in a "higher power," my reponse is generally to ask what the hell that means. I have no idea what a "higher power" or "something greater" might be, and as far as I can tell from talking to most people who ask, neither do they. So, I don't think the question is a reasonable one to ask. I think this is roughly what Wilkins was saying (apologies to him if I am wrong). As to whether that makes me an atheist or agnostic, I don't really know. I guess it just depends on which word I like better (still haven't decided).
Posted by: Tim | November 15, 2006 8:31 AM
Philosophers love semantic hair-splitting and it does make for some interesting discussions. In my mind, agnosticism is saying something like the following--"I don't believe there are fairies at the bottom of my garden, however, there is a faint possibility that they may exist in spite of there being no proof at the present. Therefore, I believe that while it's possible they are there and, proof forthcoming, I'm willing to change my mind on the fairy question, I'm reasonably certain there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden." To be consistent, you'd have to extend that same reasoning to any other unknowable (Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, alien abductions, Bat Boy, Santa Claus, you name it). What's so interesting is when people don't; why does a Supreme Being get a pass?
Posted by: Bryn | November 15, 2006 8:33 AM
What is fallacious, as has been pointed out repeatedly, is your definition of atheism as 'knowing that there is no God'. I have yet to encounter a single atheist who makes this claim.
I think some agnostics take issue with Dawkins' claim in The God Delusion that "there almost certainly is no God". It seems to imply a sort of certitude (it even made me flinch a bit when I first saw it). But Dawkins' talks about probability judgments involving God beings, and acting on those judgments. In a similar way, I think there almost certainly are no ghosts, so I didn't plan around the possibility of getting bag-tagged by one as I went out to get my coffee.
That is my problem with agnosticism: it works in that sort of super-abstract level of reasoning. Yes, you can't be absolutely certain there is no God. But I'm Mr. Wilkins had to put a substantial amount of money down on the proposition, he wouldn't come down on the side of God existing. He can correct me if I'm wrong.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 15, 2006 8:36 AM
Deism in the 18th century was no less atheistic than modern agnosticism, or for that matter modern atheism. Discuss.
Posted by: Josh Nichols-Barrer | November 15, 2006 8:42 AM
Fun to see you godless getting into your own sectarianism. Snarking at those nearest you for their insufficient purity is something we're trying to move past, but I guess you guys are new at this stuff and nothing will do but you must learn for yourselves.
Posted by: Mike | November 15, 2006 8:51 AM
Deism in the 18th century was no less atheistic than modern agnosticism, or for that matter modern atheism. Discuss.
I you were only to say that many of the Enlightenment era Deists during the 18th. century were actually closeted atheists trying to avoid persecution by the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, I would agree. But Deism is not an atheistic position, it is a theistic position that removes the more anthropomorphic aspects of the deity in question.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 15, 2006 8:51 AM
Fun to see you godless getting into your own sectarianism. Snarking at those nearest you for their insufficient purity is something we're trying to move past, but I guess you guys are new at this stuff and nothing will do but you must learn for yourselves.
Yes, rational inquiry and skepticism toward differing ideas is the exact same thing as sectarianism. We must suspect our analytic capacities right now, or else....well, you get the point.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 15, 2006 8:54 AM
Why I am an atheist:
History. It is patently obvious that people made up God(s) sometime in the past to rationalize and explain things they didn't understand.
While agnosticism is a viable philosophical position, it is not necessary to go there, given the history.
Posted by: George | November 15, 2006 9:05 AM
Not to get on my high horse or anything, but why is this so hard to understand? Atheism is a position taken on a metaphysical question (does god exist?). Agnoticism is a position taken on an epistemological question (can we know whether god exists?). They are orthogonal - you can have any position you want on one without requiring a particular position on the other. The available positions, then, are four:
- gnostic theist (I know that there is a god)
- gnostic atheist (I know that there is no god)
- agnostic theist (I can't know for sure, but I think there is a god)
- agnostic atheist (I can't know for sure, but I think there is no god).
Of the four, agnostic theists are probably the most rare - the standard example is someone who accepts Pascal's wager. The next most rare is the gnostic atheist, for reasons PZ cited in his original post.
Posted by: Ben | November 15, 2006 9:09 AM
I would love to see the people who insist that we can't know that there is no God to provide an example of something that they believe we CAN know doesn't exist - and then to show that the evidence supporting that knowledge is actually stronger than the evidence against the existence of God.
For that matter, I'd like to see them define 'God' before any other arguments are fielded.
Posted by: Caledonian | November 15, 2006 9:13 AM
The atheist's tombstone:
All dressed up and nowhere to go...
Posted by: tony | November 15, 2006 9:13 AM
Two things:
1) I tend to think about it much more simply-- if you're not a theist, you're an atheist. Shades of gray need not apply.
2) A friend of mine (though a non-believer like myself) often says that words like atheist and feminist are "tainted", in the sense that they carry too much misunderstanding, baggage, and emotion when you use them. She says that for most people, they're sort of a red-flag word that is rarely understood to mean whatever its being used for-- so even if she IS an atheist, or a feminist, she's not going to refer to herself as one.
Posted by: Daephex | November 15, 2006 9:14 AM
Yeah, you guys have been working on that for how many centuries? And catholics are still the antichrist, mormons aren't real christians, muslims and jews are/are not/might be going to hell?
Meanwhile, we've still never moved from "snark" to "active homocidal action," so, you keep plugging away, it's still advantage "us."
Posted by: Fox1 | November 15, 2006 9:17 AM
"Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley, M.D., Essays on Controversial Questions (1889)
Posted by: dale | November 15, 2006 9:21 AM
So...dispensing immediately with "certainty" which all thinking people reject as impossible in principle, it seems that one can believe or disbelieve in the existence of an un-knowable deity (or plural, at least for belief), and one can believe or disbelieve in the existence of a knowable deity/-ies. That's 4 possible combinations and we need agreed-on terminology for each to avoid pointless semantic wanking.
I'll try it:
disbelief in both: atheism
belief in a knowable deity: theism (Gnosticism if really really knowable)
belief in an unknowable deity: deism
belief in both: pantheistic pagan infidelism
huh...wasn't so hard. No place for "agnosticism" in that system...all it could mean is a giant shrug and a "dunno." Maybe a better term for that position would be "mugwumpism."
Because a mugwump is a bird sitting on a fence with its mug on one side and its wump on the other, dontcha know.
Posted by: CCP | November 15, 2006 9:24 AM
All atheists will burn forever! It is or is not the will of God, who may or may not exist!
Posted by: Militant Agnostic Schismatic! | November 15, 2006 9:27 AM
Ben and Todd know what's up. Atheist and agnostic are two separate discussions. Agnostic is not the wishy washy middle ground, it is a statement of ones idea of whether it is possible to have the knowledge of a gods existence. Atheist is easy, either you have a belief in one or more gods or you don't. There is no middle ground.
Posted by: James | November 15, 2006 9:38 AM
But by those definitions all agnostics are atheists, James.
Posted by: Caledonian | November 15, 2006 9:45 AM
It has always been a common rhetorical tactic to create a strawman for a contrary position. Those strawfeminists, strawatheists, and strawliberals certainly do make the rounds through the right wing crowd. After being repeated enough the label applied to the strawman itself becomes a pejorative term. Which of course was the point in the first place.
If people have a negative opinion of a label many are less likely to accept the positions of those with that label. It's really just an attempt to kick the feet out from under the opposition. If people won't rally to the banner then there is no real opposition.
Posted by: commissarjs | November 15, 2006 9:47 AM
Caledonian said
OK. I believe we can know that no Hydrogen nucleus exists with two protons.
Now show that the evidence in support of that proposition is weaker then the evidence against the existence of a God who has no empirical effect on the Universe.
(This is a slight cheat, since i'm not sure I'm an agnostic - but I do feel that those who simply dismiss agnosticism just haven't thought about it).
Posted by: Robin Levett | November 15, 2006 9:49 AM
Humans seem to be great mythmakers, and regrettably, great myth believers.
I am trying to work out what survival skill this may have been linked to, but, the god myth like the jesus myth merely evolved like everything else.
Certainly, back in the day, natyral phenomenon were classified as miracles or of supernatural origin by the pre-scientifics.
The resurrection story is seen in other earlier systems before christianity.
Christianity is just evolved from earlier astrological and cutural pressures
What follows is a very basic article on this subject.
When winter had passed and the sun was "born again." The "Pagan" Easter is also the Passover, and Jesus Christ represents not only the sun but also the Passover Lamb ritually sacrificed every year by a number of cultures, including the Egyptians, possibly as early as 4,000 years ago and continuing to this day in some places.
Easter is "Pessach" in Hebrew, "Pascha" in Greek, "Pachons" in Latin and "Pa-Khonsu" in Egyptian, "Khonsu" being an epithet for the sun god Horus. In Anglo-Saxon, Easter or Eostre is goddess of the dawn, corresponding to Ishtar, Astarte, Astoreth and Isis. The word "Easter" shares the same root with "east" and "eastern," the direction of the rising sun.
The principal Mexican solar festival was held at the vernal equinox, i.e., Easter, when sacrifices were made to sustain the sun. In India, the vernal equinox festival is called "Holi" and is especially sacred to the god Krishna. The Syrian sun and fertility god Attis was annually hung on a tree, dying and rising on March 24th and 25th, an "Easter celebration" that occurred at Rome as well. The March dates were later applied to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ: "Thus," says Sir Frazer, "the tradition which placed the death of Christ on the twenty-fifth of March was ancient and deeply rooted. It is all the more remarkable because astronomical considerations prove that it can have had no historical foundation...." This "coincidence" between the deaths and resurrections of Christ and the older Attis was not lost on early Christians, whom it distressed and caused to use the "devil got there first" excuse for the motif's presence in pre-Christian paganism.
The rites of the "crucified Adonis," another dying and rising savior god, were also celebrated in Syria at Easter time.
"When we reflect how often the Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to believe, was celebrated in Syria at the same season."- Frazier
The salvation death and resurrection at Easter of the god, the initiation as remover of sin, and the notion of becoming "born again," are all ages-old Pagan motifs or mysteries rehashed in the later Christianity. The all-important death-and-resurrection motif is exemplified in the "Parisian magical papyrus," a Pagan text ostensibly unaffected by Christianity:
Posted by: dale | November 15, 2006 9:50 AM
Indeed. If one does not believe one or more gods exist, then one is an atheist. Period. I concur with the commenter that said the theism/atheism and gnosticism/agnosticism oppositions are orthogonal.
Me, I'm an agnostic atheist (or, if you prefer, an atheist agnostic).
Posted by: Aureola Nominee, FCD | November 15, 2006 9:52 AM
CCP said:-
None of which positions deals with whether existence or non-existence of a deity is knowable. Which is why you conclude:-
Of course - you set the system up so there was no place for it.
Posted by: Robin Levett | November 15, 2006 9:53 AM
Easy: not only does that contradict the definition of 'hydrogen', the hydrogen atoms with two protons are ubiquitous but exert no influence on the rest of the cosmos.
Stupid arguments work both ways.
Posted by: Caledonian | November 15, 2006 9:58 AM
oops. yeah. pants down.
Actually the whole "system" thing was an elaborate setup for the hilarious mugwump joke.
but seriously folks, I started by dispensing with certainty--we ALL admit that the question of existence/nonexistence is unknowable.
Posted by: CCP | November 15, 2006 10:02 AM
The trouble with "agnosticsm" is that it unwarrantably singles out some particular notion of a god- generally, of course, whatever notion prevails in the "agnostic's" society- as somehow being different in its epistemological status from an infinite number of other things, like invisible pink unicorns and fairies at the bottom of the garden, that are no more evidentially bereft, but merely less popular to believe in. That's why it's a blatant copout. It's really a logical fallacy related to the use of opinion polls to assess the truth or falsity of a proposition.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | November 15, 2006 10:05 AM
No, we don't. Some of know that knowledge does not require absolute certainty.
Posted by: Caledonian | November 15, 2006 10:05 AM
Somebody said, "reality is merely an illusion, albeit a rather persistent one." Einstein, I think.
Posted by: dale | November 15, 2006 10:09 AM
Posted by: quork | November 15, 2006 10:11 AM
I go along with the argument based upon the improbability of any god's existence. Quite apart from the obvious fact that the god of the Jews, Xians, & Submissionists (followers of Muhammed, piss be upon him) evolved out of earlier Mesopotamian gods, (Jahweh even had a wife originally), the acts of such a god as related in the bible etc, & the plain fact of evil in the world, when the god is also supposed to be omniscient, etc, & loving, show it to be a complete asshole if it did exist. So it couldn't be as specified. The arguments from theodocy always fail.
So the odds against any particular specified god are overwhelming, (although maybe not quite 100%), (& it couldn't be as specified anyway because that's logically inconsistent), therefore I call myself an atheist.
Posted by: Richard Harris | November 15, 2006 10:11 AM
Convert now, and gain power:
'EX-ATHEIST' SIDDU MEETS ASTROLOGER, SPITS FIRE AT MEDIAMEN
Posted by: quork | November 15, 2006 10:14 AM
There is, of course, a perfectly good psychologial characterization of the distinction between agnosticism and atheism:
Theism: belief in the existence of at least one god
Atheism: belief in the non-existence of any god
Agnosticism: (i) disbelief in the existence of at least one god and (ii) disbelief in the non-existence of any god
(belief, not knowledge, thank you Ruth)
An entirely separate question is whether there is any justification for being an agnostic which is not also a justification for being an atheist, or vice versa. (There may of course be a causal explanation of how someone came to be in one psychological state rather than another). As a result, the real issue is not whether there is a difference between atheism and agnosticism -- there clearly is -- but rather whether there is any reason for thinking one should be an agnostic instead of an atheist.
Posted by: Peter | November 15, 2006 10:14 AM
Among the people I know (or at least knew in college), the difference between atheist and agnostic was basically:
Atheist: It's impossible to prove for sure one way or another whether God exists, but since you have to prove positive claims not negative ones, it's as fair for me to say God doesn't exist as it is for me to say there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden. There is no evidence for God; they are the ones who need to prove their claim; therefore, it's easy for me to come down on the side of disbelief.
Agnostic: The evidence for God and not-God is *equal.* Both sides have equally valid arguments. I couldn't possibly say I don't believe in God, because the argument for the other side is equally persuasive.
with a side of:
Agnostic: I want to believe there's something spiritual out there -- not a god, but -- something. I don't know what and I don't really believe in it because I can't identify it, but there's probably something, you know?
**
I don't know if these are functional outside the college dining hall, but more or less that's why I tend to regard agnostics as actually giving me different information than atheists. They're telling me that they reject organized religion and haven't committed to a specific spirituality, but are interested in keeping that option open. They're also generally telling me that Christianity, atheism, Zoroastrianism, and animism are equally valid possibilities and that the weight of evidence or non-evidence does not move in any direction.
So, to the extent that there are stereotypes of agnostics as wishy washy, I think it may derive from that (since many agnostics of my acquaintance seem to want everyone to be 'right').
And also, to the extent that there are stereotypes of agnostics as latent atheists, I think it may derive from a pattern I observed from many of my friends in high school and college: "I'm a Christian! Then: I'm a Christian, but I don't believe in hell! Then: I'm a pantheist -- all the gods are right!" Then: "I'm an agnostic, can't we admit that no one knows?"
And then after an epistomologically tortured, but fun, couple years: "Yeah, I'm an atheist."
Someone upthread said that an atheist is someone answering the metaphysical question and an agnostic is answering the epistomological question -- but it seems to me that which question you choose to answer is indicative of how you want your beliefs to be read, and to some extent, which question has the greater importance.
This is not to say that everyone follows those patterns, of course, nor that agnosticism always has the baggage I described earlier. But given my prior experience with self-identified agnostics, I am not surprised when I probe further and discover they want to be spiritualist, or have recently been Christian, or believe the weight of evidence is equally distributed on all religious sides.
Posted by: Mandolin | November 15, 2006 10:16 AM
Agnostics are the winners in a fence-sitting contest because agnostics make a 50/50 split decision: either some god exists or some does not. Atheists, even strong atheists, say that the probability of the existence of a god is so small that chances are bigger there is no god. The question is how small a chance there is that there is indeed a god.
One thing I am rather certain about though: Although it might be impossible to disprove the existence of a deity, it is safe to say that we can refute the existence of all the gods conceived in the mind of man, from the Abrahamic God to Freya.
And the probability of there being any god at all just got smaller.
Posted by: Rienk | November 15, 2006 10:16 AM
"Some of [us] know that knowledge does not require absolute certainty."
Oh, I don't know...are you certain?
Actually, I agree with you. That's why I think agnostics are mugwumps.
Posted by: CCP | November 15, 2006 10:17 AM
There is a reason (a bad one) to declare onself an "agnostic"- residual fear of popular opinion. Nobody feels social pressure to declare himself "uncertain" about the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden. And oddly enough, there are not a lot of self-proclaimed fairy "agnostics". Coincidence? I think not. That's why Larry Moran is correct- "agnostics" are wimps.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | November 15, 2006 10:19 AM
"Yes, you can't be absolutely certain there is no God. But I'm Mr. Wilkins had to put a substantial amount of money down on the proposition, he wouldn't come down on the side of God existing. He can correct me if I'm wrong."
More to the point, is Mr. Wilkins worried about the fate of his eternal soul? If he isn't, I'd suggest that it is because he doesn't actually SERIOUSLY consider it possible that any of the various gods who would roast it in hell actually exist. If he thought hell was a serious possibility he would be devoting at least some part of his life to trying to work out how to avoid it.
Posted by: Ruth | November 15, 2006 10:21 AM
Just so youse guys know, the article dale copy-and-pasted above can be found here. While I've heard a lot of this stuff before, I don't yet buy the whole package, particularly the identification of "Passover" (Hebrew pesach) with the Egyptian "pa-khonsu" ("house of Khonsu", maybe?). The article is wrong in claiming that Khonsu is an epithet or alternate name for Horus — Khonsu was the son of Amon-Ra and Mut, while Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris. Even when he's wearing the Horus-style falcon head, he can be told apart by the crescent-moon hat.
Furthermore, Isis is not a goddess of the dawn, and AFAIK connecting her with Astarte/Ishtar is extremely dubious New Age pseudo-scholarship. A much closer parallel to Astarte/Ishtar in Egyptian mythology would be Hathor.
Pedantically speaking, it is also incorrect to treat Passover as synonymous with Easter, but that doesn't matter so much.
Our modern word Passover was coined, along with atonement, by William Tyndale. (You recall, he was the guy who dared to translate Scripture into English and got burnt to death as a result. Too bad he lived a few generations too early to work on the King James Version, a book which owes him a considerable debt.) The actual meaning of the Hebrew word pesach is, AFAIK, unknown; Tyndale coined the English word Passover to express how the vengeful Lord our God skipped over houses decorated with lamb's blood instead of killing the firstborn sons of those families. Yea verily, the Good Lord works in mysterious, cruel and breathtakingly inefficient ways, as Penn Jillette has spoken unto thee.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | November 15, 2006 10:24 AM
Bryn said: "To be consistent, you'd have to extend that same reasoning to any other unknowable (Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, alien abductions, Bat Boy, Santa Claus, you name it). What's so interesting is when people don't; why does a Supreme Being get a pass?"
Easy--because Bigfoot, Nessie, Santa Claus, etc., are not wrapped up in the daily human round of birth, death, morality, eating, cleanliness, social interaction and so on. I think Boyers' Religion Explained is a great book on how god(s) "explain" these realities, but other fictional creatures do not.
dale said: "Humans seem to be great mythmakers, and regrettably, great myth believers."
Yes. Darwin/Dawkins did not make me an atheist; Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade did.
Posted by: Will E. | November 15, 2006 10:28 AM
"Of the four, agnostic theists are probably the most rare"
They're not rare at all. How many theists do you know who are absolutely certain that they are right? The ones who ARE certain are the ones who want to force everyone else to agree with them. Obviously they would, since they KNOW they're right.
Moderate theists are 'moderate' precisely because they acknowledge the possibility that they might be wrong, and that therefore other, potentially correct, belief positions should be respected. All such 'moderate' theists are agnostic theists.
Posted by: Ruth | November 15, 2006 10:29 AM
Personally, I think atheism and agnosticism are completely orthogonal ideas. You can have atheist agnostics as well as atheists who aren't agnostic (the mythical 100% certain atheists) and agnostics who aren't atheists (extremely heterodox, but out there nonetheless).
But I don't like the term "agnostic" precisely because of the wishy-washy connotations. I think that what agnostics mean when they describe themselves as such is actually skeptic. It's the same epistemologic stance, essentially, that positions cannot and should not be held without evidence. The difference is really a matter of scope. "Agnostic" is a term that applies primarily to religion, whereas "skeptic" is quite general.
Anyway, I've taken to called myself an "apatheist" just as a bit of a joke. I'm pretty sure God doesn't exist, but frankly I don't give a damn. If he's anything like the Christian God, I want nothing to do with him anyway. I was quite disappointed to find that someone coined the word before me.
Posted by: Joshua | November 15, 2006 10:33 AM
It is one of the classic debates of philosophy and it is fundamnetally a semantic issue. Since I lean strongly toward Wittgensteinianism, though, I think most philosophical problems are brough about by conceptual/linguistics confusions. Personally, I permanently abandoned agnosticism when I realized that most of my more left-leaning Italian relatives and friends who went to Church, prayed, explicitly called themsleves Catholics, took the Pope's proclamations seriously, and so forth, constantly referred to themslves as agnostics. Then, I thought about it and also realized that they had a strong logical case going for them: they're claim is simply that they do not know for certain,i.e. cannot empirically prove or matematically demonstarte the existence of god, but this obviously does not prevent them from beleiving (even strongly ) in the existence of god, hence they are observant Catholic agnostics!! Now, I do not believe in god and do not wish to be classified with this sort of pesudo-intellectual fashionable Catholic agnosticism, so I reasoned my way out of agnositicism very simply as follows: I do not belive that god exists (although I cannot claim anything close to knowledge in the sense of falsification of the hypthesis of its existecne).And that is to say: I beleive that god does not exist, therefore I am an a-theist. Period. Agnosticism is an intellectual cop-out and the term should be abolished from the langauge (all langauges). You either believe or you don't. Period.
Posted by: Francesco Franco | November 15, 2006 10:38 AM
Social pressure is a powerful force in promoting the label "Agnostic". There are those who say that atheism is offensive because it is the equivalent of saying, "I dismiss everything you find sacred and believe in." and (though I disagree with the implications of that position)such people would most likely be able to honestly call themselves agnostic. But it is similar to those who say "I support traditional families" while campaigning against gay rights. I want to say, "Good for you! So do I! But I also support non-traditional families". The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. One can be a theist who admits that absolute certainty is not attainable. They proudly say that it is a matter of faith. One can also be an atheist who admits the same conclusion about ultimate knowledge. Both are agnostic. Agnostic is only important in a philosophical sense, but is a meaningless term in any practical sense. Still, it will be worn as a hat of convenience as long as anti-atheistic views remain socially prevalent.
Posted by: Southern Fried Skeptic | November 15, 2006 10:38 AM
Oh, damn! I see the orthogonal thing has come up twice before.
Well, here's another meme (appropriate term, considering Dawkins' name being thrown around here) for the thread: "distinction without a difference". That's been popping up lately, and I think it applies quite well here.
"What's so interesting is when people don't; why does a Supreme Being get a pass?"
Preeeeee-cisely. It shouldn't.
"Snarking at those nearest you for their insufficient purity is something we're trying to move past"
Obviously trolling, but still. How many sects of Christianity are we up to now? Just in the US? I believe it was PZ who wrote about churches as social centers and how they fail at that role because people from one church refuse to interact with people from the others. So I guess ostracism and isolation is supposed to be a better response to a difference in position than rational argument?
Posted by: Joshua | November 15, 2006 10:54 AM
Back in University, one of my professors used the term atheist in a very specific way that I've always kind of liked:
Atheism is simply to view something "without god" - in other words without regard for a particular theism involved.
I've always felt that the religious crowd has mangled the term atheist to make it an epithet, a word used to condemn others who see the world through different lenses.
Posted by: Grog | November 15, 2006 10:56 AM
agnosticism is unjustified fence-sitting
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
"Which side are you on, boy?"
"Let's 'know' something, even if it's wrong"
"You're either with us, or agin' us!"
I like Eddington's view better;
"The Universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine"
I confess that people who profess to have it All Figured Out sorta irritate me...
And just to be clear, all religions suck absolutely at all times and in all places. But I still defend their right to exist. Just, you know, leave the rest of us the hell alone, mkay? Thanks.
Posted by: Doozer | November 15, 2006 11:00 AM
When I was in college, I had a friend who insisted he wasn't cheating on his girlfriend with another girl, even if he and the other girl were in the habit of getting naked together and indulging in heavy petting. I always thought he was kidding himself.
That's sort of how I feel about agnostics who insist they are not atheists.
Posted by: RickD | November 15, 2006 11:02 AM
When someone declares "I am an atheist" but then patiently explains that the word doesn't mean what a large percentage of people think it means (hell, even the dictionary gets it wrong!), it makes me wonder whether they really care, or understand, that the purpose of language is to communicate. If you use a word that most people 'misunderstand' to mean "I know not-X", and you know that they are apt to misunderstand, then what is the purpose, other than miscommunication?
For better or worse, atheist connotes some thing much stronger to the typical listener than a 'lack of belief', and the most conscientious listener who turns to a dictionary for clarification will not be told it means 'lack of belief'. Arguments from etymology, or historical usage miss the point if the point is to communicate.
If you want people to come away from a conversation with you with the understanding that you reject any idea of God or abstract 'higher power', then by all means, atheist is the word for you. If you want people to come away from the conversation with the understanding that you regard the idea of God as unresolvable, and (perhaps) of little pragmatic usefulness, then your word is agnostic. If you want people to come away with the idea that although you believe that there's no 100% certain way to show that there isn't a God, you believe one should provisionally reject most 'live' God concepts as improbable, then you're going to have to explain that position in detail. There's no word currently in play that captures it unambiguously.
Posted by: JY | November 15, 2006 11:27 AM
Theologians who spend their lives arguing for the credibility of a church and steering its policies, thereby furthering belief in God, could have spent their time on earth more wisely by denoucing religion as a farce and a fantasy. The Tillichs, Barths, and Kungs of this world are not high on my list of admirable people. I don't care how liberal they are.
No well-educated person should believe in God in this day and age, or feel in the least equivocal about whether he/she/it exists.
Posted by: George | November 15, 2006 11:30 AM
As one of those semantic-splitting philosophers (who is also an atheist), I would like to preserve the (in my mind, real) distinction between atheism and agnosticism. The reason for this is that many people are self-described agnostics, or at least clearly hold the beliefs ascribed to agnostics, but are also theists. For instance, Kierkegaard is pretty clearly committed to an agnostic view of God. Any person believing in god on the basis of Pascal's Wager or its variants (such as W. James) would also seem to accept agnosticism about God.
It seems many people are mistaking agnostics for agnosticism in this thread. Agnostics might hold all sorts of other beliefs about god, but the relevant claims to examine are those specificially about agnosticism. And here it seems pretty clear that agnosticism is an epistemological position about the knowability of certain kinds of metaphysical propositions. It usually involves the claim that we don't have an adequate epistemological method to ever have knowledge about certain kinds of entities (and laying aside another red herring, note that knowledge doesn't have to equal certainty in the Cartesian sense of logical possibility). Generally this is interpreted as non-empirical entities (as most agnostics are empiricists), but it need not be.
But of course this is a meta-religious claim. By acknowledging that we might never know that god does, or does not exist, the agnostic is not claiming that anything about the actual existence of god(s). It is still perfectly possible to believe in a god (a la Kierkegaard) or not believe in a god (as is the case with most self-described agnostics).
So should we say that all agnostics either are also either theists or atheists? Here is where it gets a bit trickier. The nature of belief is a hotly debated topic, but it seems possible to pick out at least two possible ways of being an atheist (from George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God), either (1) believing there is no god (AtheistA), or (2) not having a belief in any god (AtheistB). Obviously, (1) is the stronger position, and one way of understanding Dawkins is that he is encouraging those agnostics who in fact are atheists in the sense given by (2) to embrace (1).
Wilkins is correct that 'god' (and its supposed synonyms in other languages) refers to many different non-existent beings. Thus, it seems unlikely that anyone is AtheistA about all the gods that humans have believed in throughout history. However, we still lack a belief in them (as we don't even know what most of them are) and so are AtheistB about these entities (it is perhaps possible in principle to rule out most or even all conceptions of god by holding certain presuppositions about the nature of universe--positivist views might qualify for this, but this possibility doesn't affect my larger point).
It seems to me that the error made by many agnostics is to think they are holding some sort of middle ground between atheism and theism--that their lack of belief in the various proposed deities describes a position that is substantially different than other atheists, just because the grounds they have for that disbelief are different. But that is an issue distinct from whether they actually do or do not belief there is a god.
There is a simple test for this. If you ask Wilkins, "Do you believe that a god exists?", he would likely respond with either "I don't know," or "no, I don't." He probably wouldn't say (although he coherently could), "yes, I do." Thus, since he would not be willing to assent to the claim that any particular god exists, we would say that at minimum he doesn't have a belief that any particular god exists. And thus he is an AtheistB.
And both the AtheistA and AtheistB positions are atheist (no god)positions--it is just that the AtheistB is more easily defeasible.
Posted by: Joshua | November 15, 2006 11:38 AM
Agnostics get to get naked with two girls? Are you trying to get me to renounce my atheism? I think my wife will now carefully and thoroughly explain to me that yes, I am definitely an atheist, and I don't get to be one of those wild, philandering agnostics.
Wilkins, you rascal, you.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 15, 2006 11:40 AM
Oops. Evidently someone with my name already posted--and with a similar point. Good job, Joshua!
Posted by: Joshua2 | November 15, 2006 11:43 AM
"When someone declares "I am an atheist" but then patiently explains that the word doesn't mean what a large percentage of people think it means (hell, even the dictionary gets it wrong!), it makes me wonder whether they really care, or understand, that the purpose of language is to communicate."
So, in the days when many people considered the word 'homosexual' to be synonymous with 'peodophile', homosexuals should have just accepted that, and called themselves something else, should they, rather than trying to educate the ignoramuses?
Why should we have to give up a perfectly servicable, accurate word to other people's ignorance?
Posted by: Ruth | November 15, 2006 11:44 AM
Right, it's the people using the correct definition who are miscommunicating, not the people using the wrong one.
Posted by: MartinM | November 15, 2006 11:46 AM
We're atheists about all kinds of things we don't believe. PZ correctly points out that this is not the same as being completely closed minded on the subject. You could get me to believe in Santa Claus if you had good enough evidence. (It would have to be some goddam good evidence, though) But in the meantime I'm an atheist about him, as I presume Wilkins is.
Posted by: steve s | November 15, 2006 11:53 AM
I'll just point out that the OED gives the following definition:
This leaves ample room for discussions such as the one here. Do atheists disbelieve: "I do not believe there is a god"? Do they deny: "I believe there is not a god"?
While I do agree that common usage determines meaning, I don't agree that there's the broad agreement on the meanings that you suggest. That's exactly the problem.
Posted by: Davis | November 15, 2006 11:56 AM
Well, all I know is that I thank God everyday that my dad was an atheist and my mon was agnostic. Therefore I never had to put up with getting to the right place, I was already here. So I don't want to hear anyone bad mouthing either one, or you gotta deal with me. Cause bad mouthing either one is the same as bad mounthing my mom or dad!!!!
Posted by: Tulle | November 15, 2006 11:58 AM