Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Atheism, Agnosticism and Bears (Oh my)

I am an atheist. Most of my friends know what I mean when I say that, but there is enough confusion (or possibly dissembling) out there on the internet that I think it is worth spending some time on.

First, it is rather frustrating in internet debates to have someone who, by their own admission, isn't in the same category of thought as you are tell you what you think.

So this is what I mean and what most of atheist friends mean when we talk about atheism. To be an atheist is to be without theism. This definition derives straight from its etymology: a-theism -- without theism. It doesn't mean that I believe that gods don't exist. It means that I don't believe in gods exist. This may seem like a strange quibble, but it is not. Most atheists I know are willing to believe if there were enough evidence to do so. We do not assert that gods don't exist; we just don't believe in them.

Some might claim that to be an atheist is to claim that we can prove that gods don't exist. This is not so. It just means that we find no reason to believe in them. Now, it also true that if someone makes claims that contradict then those claims can be dismissed. A common debate is whether the omniscient Abrahamic god and the idea of free will are compatible. I'm not going to argue that here, but you can see that if you were convinced that these ideas are incompatible, you'd have to give up Yahweh's omniscience or give up the idea of free will. Thus if both positions were required for someone's religious stance and you became convinced that those ideas are incompatible, then you'd have to reject their position. This is important because some atheists (and I'm pretty close to being on board) assert that common positions on the gods worshiped by humans are self-contradictory. Perhaps the specifics may become the basis of another post.

Atheism, in short, is the position that the religious position is unconvincing. That's it.

Second, atheism and theism are both positions dealing with belief. The atheist does not believe; the theist does. Neither position is a religion. Religion generally has specific propositions for dealing with 'the other'. The other could be a universal mind, or nirvana, or fate, or Yahweh, or Poseidon. Theism in and of itself specifies nothing about how to cope with 'the other'. Nor does atheism. Thus neither is a religion. I bring this up because some arguers insist that atheism is a religion.

A side point here is that the whole argument that atheism is a religion or requires faith is rather backwards. (You can buy a popular Christian book called, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, by a relatively famous apologist, Norman Geisler.)  Faith is supposed to be virtue. It supposed to be something a theist is proud of. So is the apologist saying we are as bad as he is or as good as he is? It seems that the apologist intrinsically saying that faith is bad. He is arguing with an inferiority complex.


If you have doubts as to whether the atheist position I've describe requires faith, ask yourself whether it requires faith to not believe in leprechauns.

Third, there are in fact those atheists that do claim to know that gods don't exist. Many of these, as I hinted at earlier, assert that no known definition of gods are coherent.

In any case, those that claim to know might be gnostic atheists. This position is also sometimes known as hard atheism. The position that the evidence is unconvincing but that gods might exist is agnostic, or soft atheism.

So then if atheism and theism is about belief, then agnosticism and gnosticism are about knowledge. One can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. One can be a gnostic atheist or a gnostic theist. (Gnosticism here does not equate to gnostic Christianity which is a whole 'nother thing.)

Agnosticism however need not merely refer to the idea that "I do not know". It also relates to the idea of whether we can know. Thomas Huxley, who coined the term (atheism is much older), seems to have meant that metaphysical question are open to dispute, i.e., "I don't know." (Thomas Huxley's position on agnosticism can be seen here.) But when it comes to metaphysics, it is a real question as whether any such thing that is metaphysical can be known to exist at all let whether the properties of such a thing can be disputed.

So, I like the categories of agnosticism I've run across: hard agnosticism, the position that supernatural & metaphysical things are simply unknowable, and soft agnosticism, the simple admission that "I don't know."

Using the terms as I've defined them, I think of myself as a hard-agnostic atheist. I find so-called evidence for God (and gods) insufficient. I don't know that gods don't exist, but I think it improbable that it is logically possible to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural.

Consider if a being came down and offered to move Mt. Kilimanjaro into your backyard in order to prove that he/she/it was God...and then actually did it! Would you believe that that being was God? Though I would tread carefully around such a being, I would not believe. Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke's most famous quote is this: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Is it possible to imagine something you might ask of a powerful being that could convince you? Perhaps the most challenging thing you could ask is that the being create another universe. Even if it appeared that it did that, could you ever be sure that your mind wasn't thoroughly messed with. If such a being might take on that challenge, it might also simply convince you that it did succeed. Perhaps you might ask that just for a moment that your mind be opened and be possessed of all knowledge. Could you ever be sure that you weren't merely given a convincing delusion that you knew everything?

This is why I say that I call myself a hard-agnostic atheist. To be honest, however, part of this depends on the idea of the omniscient omnipotent god of Abraham. A super-powerful but fallible godling like, say, Zeus is very easily believed--and any of the beings I described above would certainly qualify. But they would not qualify for the ultimate everything of modern western religion.

One last point about logic and the plausibility of gods:

In logic, there are two fundamental syllogisms. The first is called modus ponens. It looks as follows:

  • If p then q
  • p 
  • Therefore, q
That is, if we agree that if p happens, then q happens, then we agree that p did happen, then q also did happen.

The more interesting one (for this discussion) is modus tolens. It is this:
  • If p then q
  • not q
  • Therefore, not p
If it follows that q must happen if p does, then it also follows that if q didn't happen, then neither did p.

If seems a major premise of western theism that god(s) is active in our world. If I do not see any effect that can be attributable to a god, then I am justified in supposing there is no god. I could be wrong. But given that I am unconvinced by so-called evidence for gods justifies my lack of belief in them.


Oh right, I almost forgot ... bears. Here ya go!


2 comments:

  1. There was a time, not long ago, when religionists would have covered you in hot tar and then set you ablaze for saying such things.
    THANK GOD that they would now only ridicule you, eh?

    ReplyDelete