So let’s finish this up. It’s been a long road but we’re finally at the last section in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on atheism and agnosticism. This time is an argument against agnosticism and it will come as no surprise that they still don’t understand what the word means.
What else is new, right?
It starts with another recap so we’ll skip that. People honestly can remember things for more than 30 seconds. It returns to the claims of Le Poidevin with “In Le Poidevin’s argument, the term “agnosticism” refers to the position that neither versatile theism nor global atheism is known to be true.” Well, since atheism isn’t a truth claim, that’s irrelevant, isn’t it? It is a rejection of the unsupported claims of the religious based on their complete lack of evidence in support.
However, he changes things up. “In this section, “agnosticism” refers to the position that neither the belief that omni-theism is true nor the belief that it is false is rationally permissible.” Permissible to who? That’s never made clear. However, I’m going to agree to a point here. If omni-theism cannot be demonstrated to be true and it cannot be demonstrated to be false, then taking either positive position would be, by necessity, irrational. As I said before, agnosticism isn’t a position on belief at all. It’s a position on knowledge. You can be both agnostic or gnostic and atheist or theist, in fact, absolutely everyone is. They address two entirely different questions.
“This form of agnosticism is more ambitious because knowledge is stronger (in the logical sense) than rational permissibility: it can be rationally permissible to believe propositions that are not known to be true, but a proposition cannot be known to be true by someone who is not rationally permitted to believe it.” Well, I would agree, but in the case of theism, there isn’t any rational permissibility. It is believing for emotional, not rational reasons. You may not know, in any absolute sense, that it is true, but without corroboratory evidence, it is foolish to believe anyhow.
He then starts to argue between the two possible definitions and comes up with a syllogism. Let’s take a look at it.
“(1) Atheism (understood here as the denial of omni-theism) is very probably true.” That’s still a poor definition but I think we’re going to have to go along with it, at least until the end of the article. I would agree that, given the evidence that we have at hand, it is more likely that strong atheism, the belief that there are no gods, is true than the alternative. Too bad I don’t hold the strong atheist position, huh?
“(2) If atheism is very probably true, then atheistic belief is rationally permissible.” Except rational permissibility is largely irrelevant in the real world. People believe what they believe whether there is any rational component to it or not. If that wasn’t the case, then there would be no need for atheism. Nobody would believe in gods!
“It follows from (1) and (2) that (3) Atheistic belief is rationally permissible.” Okay, fine, whatever. I’m just getting tired of the silly dance.
“(4) If strong agnosticism (about omni-theism) is true (that is, if withholding judgment about the truth or falsity of omni-theism is rationally required), then atheistic belief is not rationally permissible.” Yet that simply doesn’t follow. It does come down to the particular definition that he’s using, a definition that I reject entirely, but base skepticism demands that no position, for which evidence cannot be discerned, should ever be accepted. This means absolutely nothing.
“It follows from (3) and (4) that (5) Strong agnosticism (about omni-theism) is false.” It doesn’t because there can be no knowledge (gnosis) upon which to base an educated and informed opinion on omni-theism. Zero evidence, remember?
It then goes into a lot of blather and bullshit and frankly, I’m out of patience for that kind of thing. Let’s skip to the end and wrap this up.
“To see why this is so, imagine that a million lottery tickets have been sold. Each player purchased only a single ticket, and exactly one of the players is certain to win.” Well, that’s not how most lotteries work. Most of them have you select a series of numbers and only if you match all of the numbers drawn do you win. There is no certainty that any specific ticket will have the winning numbers, nor that multiple tickets might not have the winning numbers. Yes, I’m quibbling, but it’s what I do. It’s why precision in your ideas is actually required to make good arguments. I try not to deal in “you know what I mean”.
“Now imagine further that an informed observer has a distinct belief about each of the million individual players that that particular player will lose. According to thesis T, each of those million beliefs is rational.” Yet that’s not the case. I don’t care what anyone believes, I care what they can defend objectively. I’d have to look at their methodology to see if it is likely that it is factually correct and likely to produce positive results. Just because someone “feels” a certain way about a lottery draw, that doesn’t actually mean anything.
“Defenders of premise (2) will claim, very plausibly, that the implication of T that rational belief is not closed under conjunction is completely innocuous.” I guess we have to go back to the second premise. I never really agreed with it in principle, only because I was getting sick and tired of pointing out how wrong this all is. Remember, I’m not arguing that atheism has any positive claims to make. It is a response, made to claims made by the religious and an evaluation of the evidence presented, typically none, in its defense. No evidence = no belief, hence atheism.
“Isn’t it obvious, for example, that it would not be rational for a fallible human being to believe that all of their many beliefs are true, even if each of those beliefs were rational?” Wait, you actually think that anything is true to any degree of absolute certainty? No wonder they’re living in a fantasy world. That’s not how reality works! It’s all a matter of probability, based on the quantity and quality of the evidence we have at hand. That evidence will never be perfect, nor complete. Deal with it. It makes all conclusions provisional at best. What we think we know today may be entirely disproven tomorrow. How can these people not know that?
” So even if it can be shown that omni-theism is very probably false, it still won’t be obvious to everyone that it is rationally permissible to be a local atheist about omni-theism and thus it still won’t be obvious to everyone that strong agnosticism about omni-theism is false.” And that’s a big load of complete nonsense.
Ultimately, since none of this actually translates into reality, it’s also pointless. No matter what anyone says, theists are going to keep believing things for entirely bad, emotional reasons. Atheists, actual atheists who don’t follow the definitions provided here, are going to continue to reject the religious claims, based on the complete lack of evidence to support them. Agnostics aren’t going to be a bizarre middle ground between two positive assertions. Philosophy isn’t helping anyone where it really counts, in the real world. So I ask again, what is the point?
You tell me. I’m still trying to figure it out.