Why 'Agnostic' Probably Doesn't
Mean What You Think It Means
GEORGE DVORSKY
Lifehacker Australia
Agnostics are often characterised as ambivalent or wishy-washy
fence sitters who refuse to make up their minds. But there’s much
more to agnosticism than these tired misconceptions, including a
stricter adherence to scientific principles than those typically
invoked by atheists.
The current culture war doesn’t leave much room for
agnostics. Atheists and theists are battling it out for memetic
supremacy, each side making cocksure proclamations as to whether or
not God truly exists. Theists make the case for God by appealing to
faith, scripture, or any number of now-archaic
arguments. Atheists take the
diametrically opposed stance, arguing that there’s no reason to
believe that a supreme being exists.
And woe betide anyone who dares to complexify the
polarised nature of this debate. As far as this battle is
concerned, the answer is either black or white; there’s no
tolerance for nuance or doubt.
The vociferousness of these sentiments have largely
forced agnosticism to the philosophical sidelines. That and some
fairly serious misconceptions as to what it really means. These
days, agnosticism is often mischaracterized as
an undecided response
to a question. And in fact, the term is frequently applied outside
of a religious context when describing things for which we haven’t
yet made an opinion. For example, we can say we’re “agnostic” about
climate change, neither believing it or disbelieving it.
Alternately, it’s used to express our ambivalence about something,
using the term to equate to such sentiments as, “I don’t care,” “I
don’t really want to know,” or “I don’t even want to think about
it.”
But this casual usage of the term betrays its
original purpose, an epistemological stance and methodology in
which scepticism and empiricism — two hallmarks of the scientific
method — takes center stage.
To understand what it means to be agnostic about the
existence of God, it’s important to understand where the term came
from.
Back in 1869, T. H. Huxley coined the term to
counter the rampant dogmatism exhibited by many of his peers.
Unwilling to subscribe to another “ism”, and inspired by a
reference in the Bible to an “unknown God,” he came up with the
word “agnostic.” The word, said Huxley, was “suggestively
antithetic to the ‘gnostic’ of church history, who professed to
know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.” And
indeed, the term was never intended to be some go-between between
atheism and theism; the absence of an “ism” was quite
deliberate.
Huxley was convinced that humanity cannot and will
never know the ultimate origin and causes of the universe. In this
sense he was a Kantian sceptic — a subscriber to the notion that we
cannot know the world because the mind’s structures are a
distorting influence on our knowledge of what is real. This is what
Kant referred to as the Veil of Perception — an idea that’s
reminiscent (though not as severe) as Cartesian scepticism (i.e.
‘the only known truth is one’s own self-awareness’). Ultimately,
Huxley thought that arguments about the transcendental and
metaphysical (though possibly meaningful) were empirically
untestable.
What’s remarkable about Huxley’s scepticism was his
stance against certainty and those who refused to doubt —
especially those who insisted that their theism or
atheism must be
true.
Moreover, Huxley’s agnosticism was more than just
stubborn scepticism — it was
a methodology.
As notedby the
Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor:
He saw agnosticism as demanding as any moral,
philosophical, or religious creed. But he refused to see it as a
creed in the traditional sense of the word, and saw it far more as
a method. The method he had in mind is broadly that which underpins
scientific inquiry. It means, on the one hand, taking one’s reason
as far as it will go and, on the other, not accepting anything as
true unless it is somehow demonstrable.
Which he rightly compares to Buddhist
philosophy:
All traditions of Buddhism agree that one should not
believe something simply for the sake of believing it, but only if
it can somehow be demonstrated as true, if it can be realised in
some practical way.
Indeed, many agnostics are sceptical of those who
claim to have all the answers in regards to life, the universe, and
everything. They view hardcore atheists and devout believers with
equal scorn — and they often see the two camps exhibiting the same
kind of overzealousness when making their case and propagating
their views. To the agnostic, it’s just as important to prove the
existence of God as it is to disprove God’s existence; absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence.
What’s more, and as noted by philosopher Gary
Gutting:
Atheism may be intellectually viable, but it
requires its own arguments and can’t merely cite the lack of
decisive evidence for religion. Further, unless atheists themselves
have a clearly superior case for their denial of theistic religion,
then agnosticism…remains a viable alternative. The no-arguments
argument for atheism fails.
Agnostics also argue that, because there are so many
scientific questions about existence that remain unanswered, it’s
grossly premature to start speaking of incontrovertible
certainties. For example,consciousness is a
vexing “hard problem”. And there’s no shortage of
metaphysical explanations for our existence and the presence of the
universe, including quantum-fuelled multiverse
theories, spontaneously forming space
brains, computer
simulations, string theoried
multidimensionality, the presence of what
appears to be a finely tuned
universe,
and black holes that spew out a
never-ending chain of black hole-spewing
universes.
But many atheists counter — and with good reason —
that too much scepticism can be a problem. Indeed, when taken to an
extreme, scepticism can be quite debilitating and even harmful to
the scientific method.
Take, for example, the absurd verificationism of the
logical positivists of the early 20th century. According to their
theory of knowledge, the only statements that are cognitively
meaningful are those that can be verified either logically or
empirically. Though fashionable among epistemologists for a time,
it was eventually counter-argued that such a strict criterion for
verifiability made universal statements practically meaningless —
which would pose an unreasonable restriction on what could be
considered science.
Karl Popper was a vociferous critic of logical
positivism. He argued that science cannot move forward without
falsifiable predictions. What’s more, he found
tremendous value in metaphysics, which he viewed as an important requirement for the
development of new scientific theories. Popper believed that an
unfalsifiable concept (and thus an unscientific and perhaps
metaphysical concept) in one era can, later, through evolving
knowledge or technology, eventually become falsifiable, and thus
scientific.
As Bertrand Russell once said “Scepticism, while
logically impeccable, is psychologically impossible, and there is
an element of frivolous insincerity in any philosophy which
pretends to accept it.”
It’s an important lesson that should be heeded by
both atheists and agnostics. When it comes to “knowledge,” a
certain pragmatism is required; having knowledge is about believing
with appropriate justification what is
true. Knowledge can be highly probable, but
never certain.
Now, all this philosophizing is fine and well, but
how are we to live? Just what, exactly, are we supposed to believe
and value? Personally, my agnosticism on the matter of God is
tilted heavily in favour of disbelief. My day-to-day is rooted
under the presumption of atheism, which in turn has led me to adopt
secular humanist and secular Buddhist values. But
epistemologically, I know that I cannot know about God or other
metaphysical unknowns. This is why I describe myself as an agnostic
atheist, a “belief system” that’s referred to as
agnosto-atheism.
And I’m not alone. Outspoken atheist Richard
Dawkins has admitted that he’s
agnostic because he cannot disprove
the existence of God. On a scale from 1 to 7, he says he’s a 6.9 in
terms of the certainty of his beliefs, adding that, “I think the
probability of a supernatural creator existing is very, very
low.”
Nick Spencer of The
Guardian also supports agnostic atheism,
arguing that agnosticism can most certainly be accompanied by an
overarching metaphysical — or materialist — conviction:
And that points us to a difficulty with agnosticism.
Attitudes are fine but they need to be about something. Adjectives
need nouns. If Huxley was indeed an agnostic, he was an agnostic
atheist, tending away from the divine but unwilling (so he claimed)
to be too dogmatic about it.
Thus understood, we all need a dash of agnosticism — of appropriate
intellectual reserve in the face of the big questions. The dogmatic
alternative, familiar to us as “fundamentalism”, is neither
appealing nor helpful.
But we should not imagine agnosticism is a complete
and sufficient metaphysical position. The question is not simply
whether you are an agnostic, but what kind of agnostic you
are.
So what kind of agnostic are you?