15 August 2010

What We Mean

There’s a big argument going on right now in the internet skeptic community, which can basically be boiled down to “Atheism vs. Agnosticism.” I don’t have very many readers, of course, and I am not going to influence this debate by writing here, but I’m gonna tell ya what I think anyway.
It seems to me that there really shouldn’t be a “vs.” in there. Atheism and agnosticism are not identical, but neither are they mutually exclusive. They aren’t about the same thing. Atheism is about belief and agnosticism is about knowledge (or, more accurately, they are about the lack of belief or knowledge). These two things don’t have to overlap, but they frequently do, and it’s certainly possible to be both (like me), neither, or one or the other.
Now, as you may know (and as I’ve said on here many times), words mean things. So, if we’re gonna discuss this we should know what we mean by “atheist” and “agnostic.” Agnosticism simply means that we don’t know. As far as the existence of a god or gods goes, we are all agnostics, speaking literally. The existence of gods can’t be disproven, but there’s no evidence for them, so it’s impossible to actually “know.” Pat Robertson is an agnostic, no matter how sure he is that there’s a god. Christopher Hitchens (get well soon) is also an agnostic, no matter how sure he is that there isn’t. Belief, no matter how strongly held, simply does not equal knowledge, and so I say again, we are ALL agnostics.
That isn’t how the word is generally used, though, so we should stick to the common definition, which is certainly serviceable. Basically, when we call someone an agnostic, what we mean is that this person accepts or is aware of this universal condition of incomplete knowledge. Pat Robertson does not accept this condition, and so in this narrower sense he is not an agnostic, whereas Christopher Hitchens does and is.
Atheism is much simpler. If you don’t believe there’s a god, you’re an atheist. That is all the word means. Some people will attribute other qualities to atheists: that we are all political liberals, that we all accept evolutionary theory and Big Bang cosmology, that none of us are religious, etc. These allegations are false, or at least not uniformly true. The only thing all atheists have in common is that we don’t believe there are any gods. For example, what word besides “atheist” accurately describes both Karl Marx and Ayn Rand?
“I don’t believe there’s a god” is a negative statement. It is not a belief, but rather the absence of one. Sometimes, however, atheists use the related positive statement that “there is no god.” For most of us this is just verbal shorthand; it is inaccurate and we know it, but it is easier to say “there is no god” than “there is no evidence that there are gods and so I don’t believe in them.” If you polled every atheist in the world and asked us which of those two statements is the better summation of our beliefs, the majority would pick the latter, but in everyday conversation we don’t want to use all the extra words.
A small minority of us would still cling to the former, and of course it would not be proper to call those people agnostics under the common definition. Understand, though, that the statement “there is no god” is a belief masquerading as a fact, just the same as when a fundamentalist avers that Jesus was the son of God. It may actually be a fact that there is no god, but we don’t know that for sure; in fact, if it is true we will never positively know it. Any gods that actually exist could easily prove their existence (and the fact that they don’t should be a lot more troubling for people than it is), but if none exist there will never be any proof. The atheists who aver this belief as fact are just as irrational as fundamentalists, and I suspect that most of these “former atheists” you hear preaching on the radio now and then were this sort of atheist before their conversion. If you believe one thing for no reason, it is very easy to start believing other things for no reason. In the absence of evidence, the only rational position is a lack of belief.
And this is my point: although not all atheists are also agnostic, all rational atheists are. Furthermore, I think it would be fair to say that all or at least most rational agnostics are also atheists. It is certainly possible to admit that you don’t know whether God exists or not and also that you believe He does, but the statement is inherently irrational. Again, the two words are not identical but there is and should be a lot of overlap, so why on Earth would we argue about “Atheism vs. Agnosticism”? Isn’t that like arguing “Whiskey vs. Wine”? Can’t I love both?
For political reasons we have placed additional, artificial definitions on these words. Self-described atheists deride those less vocal with the word “agnostic,” and self-described agnostics lament the militancy of “atheists.” Don’t use “atheist” to mean “radical” and “agnostic” to mean “moderate.” Just say “radical” and “moderate.” This discussion will go nowhere if we can’t even say what we mean.