John has this habit of identifying me as an atheist. I'm not offended, of course, and I can understand why he would categorize me as such, but I prefer to use terms like "agnostic" or even just "secularist" when describing myself.
In modern usage an agnostic is someone who sits on the fence when it comes to God's existence/non-existence. As such, agnostics are often criticized by both atheists and theists for being intellectually cowardly. Personally, I am not fond of this newfound definition. I prefer a more classical sense of the term – the claim that humanity has “no knowledge” of the existence of God.
Anyway, this blog is about atheism. Specifically, what does it mean to be an atheist? This is a question I tend to take into consideration whenever I hear the so-called “New Atheists” discuss their views on atheism. Furthermore, John’s constant need to label me as one has spurred me to write about my own opinions on the subject at hand.
From what I’ve seen, whenever an atheist is challenged to prove God does not exist they quite correctly emphasize the fact that this cannot be done. No atheist, at least not one who is a complete moron, is truly foolish enough to assert the claim that seems intuitive of their title. Doing so would be a statement of faith (God does NOT exist) and shifts the burden of proof onto them. Of course, any shrewd atheist is aware it is impossible to disprove the existence of God. What they can do is criticize the need for God and religion, and offer more rational alternatives.
If I may be frank, I think most atheists are better described as classical agnostics. They do not claim to have either positive or negative knowledge of the existence of God, nor do they accept the bullshit claim that other people do.
Yeah, I wish there was a way to rehabilitate the term "Agnostic", because the classical meaning is so close to what many atheists and agnostics have settled upon.
ReplyDeleteI was watching a video of an interview with Hitchens (RIP) and Dawkins from a several months ago. The interviewer mentioned the discrepency between Atheism and knowledge of God's non-existence, Hitchens clarified that when he says "There is no God", it's a 99.99999% scenario, in that he has no knowledge or experience of God, along with an infinite number of other possibilities of which we have no knowledge. Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.
True agnosticism is the ability to say "I don't know", and not have it sound like an admission of guilt or defeat. It's a powerful thing to state a lack of evidence. And it's a shame that popular culture has twisted into a statement of weakness or intellectual sloth.
I want preface this by saying that I am a Christian, and indeed a fairly thoroughly Reformed Christian. For example, I believe that Christians are justified by faith alone through grace alone, and I believe in double predestination. Thus, I believe that no one can come to God unless he or she is called by God, and that God's election is not based in any way on human merit, reason, or choice. In other words, there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to influence whether or not he or she will have faith. These views may seem difficult to comprehend to many non-Christians, and even to many Christians, but they have some interesting consequences. First, they entail that faith has nothing to do with intelligence, good reasoning, or moral character. Someone can be incredibly intelligent, reason very well about the question of God's existence, possess an exceptional moral character, and still not believe. In fact, I think that there is ample evidence of this. I am an academic, and I have met many academics who are tremendously smart and morally upright - far more intelligent and moral than me, in fact - but who do not believe in God.
ReplyDeleteReformed Christians like me face a number of questions, including whether it is reasonable for non-believers not to believe. It may seem that the answer is simple - if faith is purely a gift from God over which we exercise no control, then those who haven't received faith would be unreasonable to affirm the existence of God without it, and so it is reasonable for them not to believe. There are some gaps in this argument, and some potential objections as well, but I am inclined to think that the argument is on the right track generally, and that it is perfectly reasonable for non-believers not to believe, at least in the sense that they don't have any decent evidence for God's existence.
[Continuing where I left off...]
ReplyDeleteSuppose this is right. Should non-believers be atheists or agnostics? That is a difficult question. I tend to agree with much that has already been written on it here. However, it's late, and I feel that I need to go through a process to express any thoughts at all, so here goes. It seems unreasonable to believe in or suspend judgment about the existence of some things. For example, it seems unreasonable to believe in or suspend judgment about the existence of a box of Snicker bars on the other side of the galaxy - even though we cannot prove that there is no such box, it seems excessively timid to deny that there is such a box. In other words, we shouldn't believe that there is such a box, and we shouldn't even suspend judgment about the existence of such a box - we should flatly deny that there is any such box. I think that the same is true of ghosts, unicorns, elves, etc.
At this point you may say that belief and disbelief come in degrees, and that we shouldn't be perfectly confident about anything that we cannot prove. If you sympathize with this line of thinking, then you may want to say that we shouldn't be perfectly confident that there is no such box, but only that we should be very, very confident that there is no such box. I actually think that there are good reasons to be suspicious of this line of argument, but I won't pursue them here. Let's suppose that this is all correct. Suppose that we are 99.9% certain that there is no such box. Does this mean that we are atheists or agnostics about the box? (I understand that "atheism" applies only to religious belief, but go with me here. I don't want to coin new terms.) I think that a good case could be made here that we are atheists, and that atheism doesn't require full confidence in the non-existence of the object in question, but only very, very high confidence in its non-existence. Certainly atheism - about the box of Snickers or God - isn't compatible with a fairly low degree of confidence of the object's non-existence. So, perhaps we should focus on this question - how confident in the non-existence of God should a non-believer be?
I think that this question is very difficult. Nonetheless, I am very strongly inclined to think that a non-believer should not be very, very confident that God doesn't exist, and perhaps not even very confident, but that he or she can reasonably be at least fairly confident. I guess this would make him or her an agnostic, and not an atheist, regardless of whether atheism was consistent with the presence of at least some substantial doubt of its own correctness. However, I think that the answer really depends on how confident one can be of the evidence against God's existence. Some very smart philosophers think that this evidence is very strong. I tend to think that it is fairly weak. But I am biased! If a non-believer believes that he or she is in possession of extremely strong evidence against God's existence (presumably a philosophical argument), then I suppose this person should declare himself an atheist, even if he has some doubts about his own position. However, if he doesn't feel that he has such evidence, then he should probably consider himself an agnostic. He can still criticize theists for believing, but he should probably also criticize atheists just as strongly for disbelieving. He should probably argue passionately that things such as God's existence are beyond our grasp, and that we should say nothing about them. He can then devote himself to good works. I would disagree with this person, but I certainly wouldn't consider him intellectually or morally inferior in any way for holding the views he does. In fact, I would be prepared to grant that he is my superior in every way. Now I better hope that I never try to get ordained and that someone finds this post.
There was a typo in my previous comment. When I said "...it seems excessively timid to deny that there is such a box", I mean to say rather that "...t seems excessively timid not to deny that there is such a box". Sorry!
ReplyDelete