Agnosticism
December 18th, 2005Pretty interesting discussion over at Pandagon about what it means to be an agnostic as opposed to an atheist. I’ve never given it much thought — it’s always seemed pretty cut and dried to me. We agnostics basically think that believing God exists and believing God doesn’t exist are both statements of faith with no basis. So we make neither. I honestly didn’t think there was more to say on the subject.
On the other hand, it seems like many people use the term casually to refer to a belief about the relative probability about god’s existence. As if atheists have a faith based belief that there is no god. But that’s really not a reasonable characterization. Certainly some are more strident than others, but it’s hard to imagine the existence of an atheist who’s certainty in the lack of god’s existence could be seen as so “flying in the face” of something that it would merit being called faith-based, or unreasonable. The label agnostic seems to be almost an accusation that were an atheist confronted with proof of god’s existence, he would deny it to maintain his atheism.
I don’t think that’s fair. I think that if a group of atheists were suddenly confronted with proof of God’s existence, some would immediately convert, some would remain skeptical. I do believe that Atheism is a religious belief, and atheists have just as much capacity to be unreasonable as anyone else. “There must be a rational explanation for this” is just as dogmatic a statement of faith as “Our father, who art in heaven…”
