The Poverty of Agnosticism

The title of this post is taken from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Don't judge me just yet though; this isn't merely a rehashing of Dawkins' words, and I chose it for reasons which I hope will become more clear throughout the course of this post. Without any further delay, I will therefore proceed to the main body.

This may come as a surprise, but I try to avoid discussions on the topic of religion, as my position is difficult to offer concisely and summaries will often leave an impression which is both inaccurate and counter-productive. Even if this weren't so, I find that such discussions, except when handled on the most intimate of terms, soon devolve into impassioned arguments with little room to manoeuvre. Sometimes, this transition occurs before the debate can even properly begin, merely with the suggestion that someone wishes to raise an objection to your view (whatever that view is). Where I live, religions tend to be fairly moderate and so people are especially keen to avoid offence, as there is a sense of an uneasy peace between theists and atheists based on the agreement that each will keep out of the other's business, and this attitude is pervasive down to the individual level. This may in fact result in "discussions" which are anything but; lip-service paid to each side, concessions and admissions of understandings, the acknowledgement of the equal validity of opinion and so on. Such a conciliatory approach is often advantageous in debate, but when substance (especially in rebuttal) is forgone for such toothless tactics, what results is less an exchange of ideas and more an exchange of empty, meaningless words.

It seems we are stuck between extremes, then. Given the choice between happy but meaningless jibber-jabber and angry outbursts of almost absurd accusations, most people I know (myself included) tend towards the former, consciously or otherwise. Now, what does this have to do with agnosticism? I have had many discussions about personal beliefs with friends in the past and have noted that a large number have declared themselves to be agnostic when I asked them about their beliefs. It is my intention to show that such a response is in many respects a poor response (hence the title).

Before I launch into any sort of tirade, I think it is important to establish exactly what it is we are talking about. Firstly, I will clear the air by stating that there are a number of distinct types or forms of agnosticism, but the common characteristic between all of them is doubt. I think that if someone told you they were agnostic, they would either mean they were a strong agnostic or a weak agnostic (I take this from experience). If we were to write a simple children's book, a first guide to religions and religious ideas, perhaps, then the definition of weak agnosticism would read something like "we do not know there if there is a god, and so we will abstain from judgement" while strong agnosticism would read something like "we cannot know if there is a god, so judgement would be pointless". I personally find strong agnosticism to be a far more pointed and interesting belief, but alas it is not the subject of this post. This post is directed at the weak agnostics who identify themselves as such and importantly, nothing more.

Weak agnosticism (I will hereforth refer to it only as agnosticism) is in my opinion largely about being noncommittal. If you ask someone who defines themselves as such if they are an atheist and they say 'no' or even go on to rebuke atheists for their certainty, then they seem to be trying very difficult to not pick sides in the atheism vs. religion debate (if we could say there is such a thing). This is a response which I do not like and do not appreciate for two reasons.

Firstly, if I ask what you believe about God, or what your opinion is about the existence of God, then saying you're an agnostic is akin to saying you don't know. That's a fair answer, of course, if the question was about whether or not you know if God exists. But that's not the question. The question is about what you believe. If you give the strong agnostic response, that we cannot know, then that can actually lead to some interesting discussion, but if you're simply saying that you don't know then you're dodging the question.

Secondly, if you do not believe in a god, you are an atheist. That's the definition of what atheism is, the lack of belief in gods. A + theism. It literally does not make sense for you to say you don't believe in God but you're not an atheist. If you don't know and so you've decided to not subscribe to any religion or any belief in God, then you are an atheist. Any denial of this is either due to an honest miunderstanding of what atheism is or a deliberate evasion of the... let's say 'not entirely positive' connotations of the word 'atheism'. Ignorance is excusable if you make an effort to alleviate yourself of that position, but deliberate obfuscation of your beliefs is intellectually cowardly and I don't care for it in myself or others.

Now, having ranted as I wanted to, I should add an important caveat. I consider myself agnostic, although weak or strong I haven't decided. I think it's really the only reasonable position to take. I think any sort of gnostic position, theistic or otherwise, is very foolish for reasons I will address in a much longer, more detailed post on religion. But what I think is important is that gnostic vs. agnostic and theist vs. atheist are two very distinct questions which must be addressed separately, and conflating the two is a mistake. You can be an agnostic and an atheist, as I consider myself, and you can be an agnostic and a theist, but you can't be an agnostic and neither, and it is people who try to take up this position, or pass themselves off as taking this position, who bother me. After all, if we accept that at least at present such debates are always going to occur, then the least we can do is be rigorous enough to know what we're talking about and honest enough to reveal our opinions to each other with enough clarity to allow open discussion and criticism.

Addendum: I've been meaning to add something to this post for some time, although I'm not sure exactly what. At the time of posting, I felt there was something lacking to it, there was an incompleteness about it, if that makes sense. The explicit purpose of the post was to address the cowards who try to redefine their own language to avoid being labelled as something and in doing so label themselves as something else, but in doing so, some of my objections which could have applied more broadly to other types of agnostics (not mentioned) would equally have applied. Take, merely for instance, the case of the apathetic agnostic; someone without any interest in the question of divinity (or even someone who has not even considered the question at all). The categorisation is typically framed as I have done, in terms of agnosticism, and yet by definition such a person must be atheistic; they have no belief in God, for if they did they could not call themselves apathetic. The same cannot be said, of course, of the agnostic theist. Just as I have claimed that the agnostics I mentioned so far hold atheistic belief claims but agnostic knowledge claims without any contradiction, it is important to note that there are those with theistic belief claims and agnostic knowledge claims (something I may have previously alluded to). It is also worthy of note that not all beliefs fall neatly into theistic vs. atheistic, although they all seem to at least lean one way or the other - this is something that should factor into considerations as well.

This little addendum here doesn't wholly amend my anxieties about the post, but I think it demonstrates at least that there is a little more to the subject than I have explicitly stated, and I invite all of my few readers to take the topic one step further (although not necessarily in agreement with me, I would imagine would be the response!).