Kevin Brandt
Contributor
There seems to be some confusion about what agnosticism actually is.
There’s also some criticism of agnosticism flying around, coming from both the religious and atheist fronts. Richard Dawkins, the man who single-handedly turned atheism into a quasi-religion, called agnosticism “fence-sitting, intellectual cowardice” as though agnostics were afraid of deciding whether god(s) existed or not.
The assumption here – and the one almost always thrown at agnostics – is that we are confused individuals, unsure of our beliefs and unable to make up our minds.
This could not be more incorrect.
Agnostics are quite sure about something: the lack of human ability to understand or explain something as incomprehensible as the existence of god(s), as well as certain scientific hypotheses.
The human mind can only be cognitive of particular things, and our imaginations take care of the rest. We can theorize and hypothesize about many things scientific or theological, and sometimes we can progress to the point of actually proving or disproving our postulations, but other times an explanation is just out of our grasp.
Take time travel, for example: we can imagine its possibility by positing its necessary requirements, but can we say for sure that, even given those requirements, time travel would work in the way we theorized? For the same reasons, we cannot certainly know what would happen if we ever voyaged into a black hole, or what parallel universes (if they even existed) would look like.
Things become much more difficult when trying to explain the origin of the universe. Was a “big bang” the cause of all existence, and if so, what caused the cause? Did god(s) create the universe? If so; how, when and why?
The Old Testament attempts to explain the origin of the universe (perhaps allegorically), but the seven-day explanation is simply scientifically impossible. If the creation story is, in fact, a metaphor, and the notion of a billion- year-old universe is compatible with the notion of god(s), that still doesn’t imply that god(s) definitely exist. The fundamental question regarding the origin of universe, as well as other esoteric questions is, “How do we know for sure?”
Agnostics recognize that, at the current moment, we cannot know for sure. We can create very imaginative, sometimes very beautiful, stories and speculations, but the fact remains that we are reaching beyond our grasp.
To suggest, like most religions do, that we do, in fact, understand such enigmas of the universe is an arrogant statement which completely exaggerates our ability to comprehend matters that are beyond us – we mistakenly paint ourselves as knowing more than nothing. We cannot know what existed before the creation of the universe, or what caused the creation of the universe.
May we ever know? I would say probably not. When we can’t explain such things, this is when we begin to imaginatively hypothesize. This is what religion is: an attempted explanation, but not verifiable truth. Religion cannot explain, without doubt, questions about god.
How can we absolutely say what the nature of god is? What the number of gods is? Whether god loves us? What god feels about us? Whether there is life after death, or reincarnation? Religious people tend to speak a lot about these issues, but can they back it up with something other than “faith”? Moreover, how can humans speak for something that is so beyond human comprehension?
Faith is not the same as knowledge; belief does not correlate to truth. If religion helps someone deal with the many hardships of human life, then that is no one’s business (so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone). But people should question their faith in order to determine what it is they truly believe. Critical thinking is a virtue.
For centuries, many believed that the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the Earth. Similarly, many people believed, according to the Bible, that the Earth was only a few thousand years old.
I’m not trying to destroy another’s faith. Rather, I’m suggesting we must realize nothing is certain, no matter how much we believe it to be, and no matter how much faith we put into it.
Blaise Pascal famously suggested that we should abandon any doubt, just in case god(s) do(es) exist, simply to be on the safe side. But how do we know which god(s) to follow? The Judeo-Christian god says that we must worship “Him” only, since he is a jealous god. But what if Hinduism, Sikhism, Scientology or Paganism is the “true” religion?
In any case, it is impossible to prove or disprove such religious beliefs (and, currently, some scientific theories), and agnostics recognize this inability and choose not to blindly follow anything that is certainly humanly impossible to know.
Maybe, it’s the uniquely human awareness that we’re ultimately going to die which leads to the need for an explanation for the unexplainable.
Nonetheless, we must humble ourselves before reality.
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Theism vs atheism vs agnosticism
The debate is getting louder and louder: where do you stand? Are you a staunch atheist? An open-minded theist? A stern agnostic with an argument to back you up?
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In defence of agnosticism
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This is a good article on dispelling the misperceptions or stereotypes of agnosticism. You are right that so often people dismiss agnosticism as a rational position.
I am a Theist (Christian) and I would like to dialogue here on the understanding or definition of faith, as used in this article, which seems to me to be a common misperception.
I want to point out that people commonly and stereotypically use the term “faith” to mean “religious beliefs”. But we must remember that religious beliefs or religious faith is only one form of faith. People believe many things and exercise faith in many things outside the realm of what is normally called religious.
This article fails to see that all human beings exercise faith on a whole lot of things in order to function in life. There are so many beliefs we hold that have no scientific demonstrability or certainty. There are many beliefs we hold that cannot be proven beyond a shadow of doubt.
In his book, An Atheist Defends Religion (2009), Bruce Sheiman (an atheist) argues that: “Reason and faith are two dimensions of one truth; they are interdependent; both are necessary components of science and religion.” (p. 187) Here’s what he has to say about “faith”:
“Faith is the universal human capacity to address our ultimate concerns. It is a personal orientation that centers us, provides the values that shape our decisions, and goes to the core of our identity. Whether we become believers or nonbelievers, we always use faith to make sense of our lives. Faith pertains to our foundational worldview: whether we think people are trustworthy; whether we believe wealth will make us happy; whether science tells us the truth of reality; whether there is a God. These are unprovable assumptions that underlie all our acts of reasoning. Facts do not require faith, but the belief systems through which we interpret those facts are based on faith.” (p. 189)
Furthermore, Sheiman continues, “Militant atheists who want to eliminate faith are misguided. Not only is it not desirable, it is not even possible. We always engage the two capacities at the same time. Reason brings faith to life, making it flexible and self-correcting. Faith gives reason a direction and purpose. Reason without faith engenders doubt, distrust, and cynicism. Faith without reason becomes absolutist and totalist.” (p. 191)
So, the common stereotypical approach to the whole religion vs. science or atheism vs. agnosticism vs. theism debates that lump reason on the side of atheists and agnostics and faith on the side of religion is really off the mark and unhelpful in moving the debate forward. Atheists, agnostics and religious folks ALL exercise faith AND reason (including critical thinking) in their worldviews and ideological systems. All their interpretations of facts are filtered through their ideological/religious lenses that ultimately are based on faith. They differ in basing their faiths on different things/beliefs/worldviews.
This is not a bad thing: it is merely a human thing. I am hoping that by leaving behind this false dichotomy between faith and reason, we can actually make some progress in dialogues between atheists, agnostics and religious folks.
First of all, I have to agree with Shiao and Kevin on most of what they are saying, but their are somethings that need to be clarified. This system of labeling is much more complex then seen at first light.
Technically speaking, a person cannot be an agnostic. The word has been twisted to represent something that actually is only considered to be a sub-heading to another bigger tittle.
In the argument of Atheism vs. Theism vs Agnosticism, agnosticism technically doesn’t exist. The word agnostic is derived from gnostic – which roughly means to have knowledge or information on a certain topic. Now obviously agnostic means the opposite – To lack knowledge or information. Now if someone says “Hey, I’m an agnostic.” I would be obligated to ask “an agnostic what?”.
So, entailing that in this argument you can really only be 4 things: on the Theistic extreme we have Gnostic Theists (People who believe god exists, because of some sort of physical knowledge or proof, a sizeable number of people fall under this category).
Next we have Agnostic Theists (People who believe god exists, but are willing to admit they do so even without evidence, the majority of moral religious people fall under this category).
Now on the Atheistic extreme we have: Gnostic Atheists(People who believe god does not exist based on physical evidence, you won’t find many of these people).
Last, but not least we have Agnostic Atheists (People who don’t believe in god, because THERE IS NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION TO PROVE SO. Almost all atheist and definitely all “agnostics” fall under this category.)
In conclusion, I’m willing to guess that Shaio you fall under Agnostic Theist, and Kevin(if you really are an “agnostic”), then you fall under Agnostic Atheist. I urge you to pass this on because this is the proper way of using the word agnostic/gnostic it’s very disheartening for me to hear people support and use a broken system of labeling their own beliefs.
Dear Shiao, thanks for your reply. I really do appreciate it.
I would like to argue that faith and reason are two separate things. However, I agree that faith is not limited to theists, and that it is a human characteristic. I could have faith (or believe) that I will marry my girlfriend; or I could have faith that I will win the lottery; or I could simply have faith that tomorrow may be a better day than today.
I do not doubt this. Yet, the point of the article is that faith does not equal knowledge, and that the theist argument that their faith entails the existence of god(s) is not valid. Though I may have faith that tomorrow may be better than today, I cannot know for sure – it may very well be worse.
My goal is not to eliminate faith. As I stated in the article, if faith is what helps you deal with the trials & tribulations that is human life, then all the best to you. My goal is to eliminate the false relationship between faith and knowledge that theists hold to be true.
And to Daanish: Your points make a lot of sense. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call myself an atheist, because I suppose I’m willing to entertain the idea of the existence of god(s) in light of the lack of evidence which disproves its/their existence. In other words, while I’m aware that god(s) cannot be proven (unless it/they actually make themselves known to the world), I’m also aware that god(s) cannot be disproven either (because science, at the moment, can only explain so much).
If you believe this still qualifies me as being an Agnostic Atheist, then I suppose we can only agree to disagree.
Thanks to all for reading.