Today, we’re back with part 2 of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy’s entry on atheism and agnosticism. I will admit that, so far at least, it has been better than the entry on moral realism. At least the author differentiates the usage as one that is useful within philosophical discussions, something that I wish a lot more armchair philosophers would figure out. Mostly, they insist that everyone uses the SEP definition when discussing the subject outside of philosophical circles.
Yeah, that’s not going to go well for you.
“The terms “agnostic” and “agnosticism” were famously coined in the late nineteenth century by the English biologist, T.H. Huxley” Sure, but that doesn’t mean that they had no meaning earlier, they just entered the common lexicon there. The word agnostic, just like the word atheist, is just a negation of the “gnosis”, or claim of knowledge that has been used by the religious for centuries. It’s just a way of saying “I don’t believe you”.
Then you get plenty of people trying to standardize the idea and argue that everyone has to use it the same way and that’s never a recipe for success. Within a specific, narrow context where everyone agrees, fine. Do what you will. There is never a case where you’re going to be successful telling people “you use this word, therefore you believe X!”
“Roughly, Huxley’s principle says that it is wrong to say that one knows or believes that a proposition is true without logically satisfactory evidence (Huxley 1884 and 1889).” I would agree with that. Knowledge must have some kind of demonstrable basis in objective fact. You can’t just proclaim that you know Bigfoot is real. How do you know? What is your epistemic support for it? Being emotionally convinced isn’t the same as having knowledge, but many people use it that way. It’s why I struggle with people who claim knowledge that they can’t demonstrate. Just because you strongly believe that a god is real, that doesn’t mean that you know it. You have no justification for such a claim. Therefore, we have to look at how that individual is using the term and often, it’s just a strong belief and not knowledge at play. That becomes faith, not knowledge.
It’s why there are so many different views on what gnosis is. It can’t be actual knowledge without evidentiary support. Therefore, some take gnosticism as the possible future existence of demonstrable evidence. Could there be evidence for a god? We certainly don’t have any at the moment, but could it exist at some unspecified time? It’s why you can’t just point to a definition in a book and declare everyone follows it. That demonstrably isn’t true.
“Nowadays, the term “agnostic” is often used (when the issue is God’s existence) to refer to those who follow the recommendation expressed in the conclusion of Huxley’s argument: an agnostic is a person who has entertained the proposition that there is a God but believes neither that it is true nor that it is false.” Unfortunately, far too many people, especially on the religious side, have decided that agnosticism is some middle-ground between atheism and theism. It’s a less threatening position to take than the rejection of their faith. It isn’t useful in any intellectual way, it’s all about emotional coddling. It just doesn’t get them where they want to go because agnostics still don’t believe in their gods, by and large. They are still, by any rational usage of the word, atheists.
Agnosticism and gnosticism refer to knowledge, or the potential availability of knowledge and atheism and theism refer to actual belief. Do you believe or not? It’s a binary. If you don’t, for any reason whatsoever, then you are an atheist. If you believe in any god for any reason at all, then you are a theist. You can’t be both and you can’t be neither. Theists hate the idea and, unfortunately, a lot of philosophers do too. It’s really too bad for them.
“The problem is that it is also very useful for philosophical purposes to have a name for the epistemological position that follows from the premise of Huxley’s argument, the position that neither theism nor atheism is known, or most ambitiously, that neither the belief that God exists nor the belief that God does not exist has positive epistemic status of any sort.” Again, we are seeing something that is argued for the good of philosophy, whether or not it is useful in the real world. They are looking for clarity in an inherently muddy pool. That’s not how the real world works. It’s where I see a lot of similarities between how philosophy works and how religion works. Both are trying to operate for their own good, even when their operation doesn’t actually work outside of their own hallowed halls. That’s fine if you can restrict it to your ivory towers, but tons of armchair philosophers don’t understand that’s not how things work in reality. You can’t hold people accountable to your academic definitions against their will.
“Just as the metaphysical question of God’s existence is central to philosophy of religion, so too is the epistemological question of whether or not theism or atheism is known or has some other sort of positive epistemic status like being justified, rational, reasonable, or probable.” Because this is all being done to serve philosophy, not to serve humanity. Theism and atheism can’t be known because there is no evidence on either side. It is just believed. You can argue whether belief or disbelief is justified, but that doesn’t get the terms into the little boxes that a lot of philosophers tend to prefer. You can’t get the ideas held by billions of irrational humans into a box though. That’s a fool’s errand.
“If, however, “agnosticism” is defined as a proposition, then “agnostic” must be defined in terms of “agnosticism” instead of the other way around.” So this is just a word game. If you define it the way that you choose to define it, instead of the way it is actually used, then it has to be used in a manner consistent with the definition that you’ve imposed on it. It’s looking for precision in an inherently imprecise world. This is one of the many places that they go wrong.
“Specifically, “agnostic” must be defined as a person who believes that the proposition “agnosticism” is true instead of “agnosticism” being defined as the state of being an agnostic.” Except there really isn’t an “agnostic” position. Agnostic is the absence of the quality gnostic, just as atheism is the absence o the quality theism. It is not believing (or knowing). It isn’t an independent position to hold.
“And if the proposition in question is that neither theism nor atheism is known to be true, then the term “agnostic” can no longer serve as a label for those who are neither theists nor atheists since one can consistently believe that atheism (or theism) is true while denying that atheism (or theism) is known to be true.” That’s one of the first things that I’ve seen that I actually agree with. Agnostic isn’t some ill-defined mid-ground between theism and atheism. It is something entirely different, dealing with an entirely different subject matter. Well done!
He then goes into all of the things this new view of agnosticism can apply to, but I’m going to skip over that. There are certainly various kinds of agnosticism, just as there are various kinds of atheism. I don’t know that’s at all in question.
“Notice too that, even if agnosticism were defined as the rather extreme position that neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief ever has positive epistemic status of any sort, it wouldn’t follow by definition that no agnostic is either a theist or an atheist.” Yes and no. First off, I disagree that such a view is extreme at all. It continues to make the mistake that atheism is a positive assertion, something that it generally is not. It is simply the lack of the quality theism. It says absolutely nothing on its own. Where I think he gets it right is when he says that agnostics can’t be either theist or atheist. That is absolutely false. In fact, all agnostics *ARE* either atheist or theist. All human beings are either atheist or theist. You can’t be both, you can’t be neither. You either believe or you don’t. It is a binary proposition. In fact, what philosophers try to put into the same continuity are two inherently binary propositions. They are related but not identical. It’s sad that they can’t get that through their heads.
“More recently, some atheists proudly call themselves “agnostic atheists”, although with further reflection the symmetry between this position and fideism might give them pause.” No, that’s an accurate representation of how the words actually function. You can be both agnostic, not claiming to have knowledge about the existence of gods, and atheist, not holding any positive belief in the existence of gods. It’s really not that hard!
“No doubt both senses of “agnosticism”, the psychological and the epistemological, will continue to be used both inside and outside of philosophy. Hopefully, context will help to disambiguate. In the remainder of this entry, however, the term “agnosticism” will be used in its epistemological sense. This makes a huge difference to the issue of justification.” Certainly, he’s welcome to use the term in any sense that he wishes, but that doesn’t obligate anyone to agree with him. Absolutely no one polled the overwhelming majority of atheists and agnostics to see if they agreed with this usage. Most would not. Just because you want the word to mean that, that doesn’t mean that’s what the word means. Language is fluid whether anyone likes it or not. You don’t get to dictate terms.
“It is one thing to ask whether Kenny’s inability to find arguments that convince him of God’s existence or non-existence justifies him personally in suspending judgment about the existence of God. It is quite another to ask whether this inability (or anything else) would justify his believing that no one (or at least no one who is sufficiently intelligent and well-informed) has a justified belief about God’s existence.” It’s actually not. The definition of knowledge that most people use is “justified true belief”. If you can’t justify your beliefs, if you can’t demonstrate that they are true, then you can’t conceivably have knowledge. If you don’t have knowledge, then you can’t claim to be gnostic. That means that you are agnostic for the purposes of the discussion, the terms being binary, and atheist in the sense that you have no positive belief in the existence of gods. It is certainly open to interpretation whether anyone ought to believe things given a lack of justified, demonstrably true knowledge, but that’s another question entirely.
“If agnosticism (in one sense of the word) is the position that neither theism nor atheism is known, then it might be useful to use the term “gnosticism” to refer to the contradictory of that position, that is, to the position that either theism or atheism is known. That view would, of course, come in two flavors: theistic gnosticism—the view that theism is known (and hence atheism is not)—and atheistic gnosticism—the view that atheism is known (and hence theism is not).” This wouldn’t be a problem if you’d stop pretending that atheism is a positive assertion. It is not. It is a lack of the quality “theism”. It is a lack of belief in gods. That’s it. When you start from such an untenable position it’s no wonder why you come to such absurd conclusions.
I do recommend that people follow the link at the very beginning because I do skip over things here and there. It’s important to read these things in context in order to keep it all straight. So, do you agree with me or not? Let me know in the comments. We’ll be back in a couple of days with more.