ATHEISM/AGNOSTICISM
15th December 2003
A commonplace statement of this matter is that an atheist is one who denies dogmatically that there is any god; a theist is one who asserts dogmatically that God exists; an agnostic is one who isn't sure either way. This is a pretty unsatisfactory way of looking at the question - it is commonly the way that naive thinkers adopt. It is the basis of one of the silliest statements recently quoted from some ephemeral newspaper source (the name of which I have forgotten already). The silly statement is "You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist".
Before going any further it is useful to distinguish between the meaning of a word and its connotation. The 'correct' meaning of a word usually follows from its roots in one or other of the principal dead languages - Latin, Classical Greek etc.. The connotation of a word is what it is currently taken to mean. Sometimes the distinction is unimportant but, in some cases, the distinction is stark. For example the word paedophile means, in the light of classical Greek roots, one who loves children; but, in day to day usage, it is taken to mean an exploiter of children's vulnerability in matters pertaining to sex.
The word agnostic means - from the Greek - one who has no knowledge. Strictly therefore it is a nonsense word - gnosis is the Greek for knowledge and the prefix a negates the rest of the word. (e.g symmetry and asymmetry). Even Descartes, who tried to doubt everything that could be doubted, felt obliged to admit that he knew his own existence to be a fact - cogito ergo sum - was his Latin phrase for this rock bottom knowledge.
It takes an odd mind to deny that it possess any knowledge and so agnostic has acquired the useful connotation of believing only on evidence and logical inference therefrom. I, for example, am agnostic on the question of Britain and the Euro. I have no gnosis, no 'knowledge' - revealed or intuitive - based upon patriotism (euro non-no) or internationalism (euro yes-yes). I want hard evidence and serious discussion but our public persons, in the media and in politics, do not help with their sketchy reference to the question. There are many and various subjects upon which one may be legitimately agnostic. The question of the existence of god is only one such subject.
Now for atheist and atheism. The Greek theos means god and a theist is one who believes that there is an existing god and, again the prefix a negates the word. An atheist is simply one whose list of beliefs does not include the dogma there is such a being as God. The atheist is one who is without theistic belief. To repeat this, an atheist is one whose beliefs and opinions do not include 'God exists as an objective entity'. Atheism is perhaps more properly spelt with a hyphen .... a-theism.
I am both of these things - an agnostic and an atheist. I seek evidence that there is god but I find - after well over seventy years exposure to religious propaganda - no sufficient reason to be a theist. I am not prepared to play the theists' game and assume that all opinions on serious matters have to be faith statements - positive or negative There is no need for a negative faith-statement such as 'There is no god'. I often refer to myself as a default atheist.
The proposition "God exits" is conjecture - habitual
conjecture, plausible conjecture, useful conjecture in some ways but destructively divisive in many ways. Given that we do not genuinely know that there is a god then it is a 'free for all' to attribute to the perceived god any features whatever - omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence .... what ever you fancy within the limits of logical admissibility (even those limits are controversial). You can do a reductio ad absurdum with the god idea - you can envisage a world in which all people, except me, are dogmatic atheists and I can still assert that God is compulsively secretive and has made (almost) all of us wilfully blind to His Real Existence - Omnicagey God! Considering how fed up, with endlessly repetitious praise and petition, surely a perceived god of the usual kind must be, at the very least, Omnipatient!
People create god in their own image. That is the central core of atheism and it can still be true even if there is a god whom we have simply not noticed. People can, and do, invent a huge variety of gods anyway - and the inventors and their followers often fight amongst themselves with devastating effects on human society. There is no doubt that the best market-share among god-ideas is that of the Mysteriously Benevolent God. The benevolence is reassuring while the mysteriousness enables its believers to dodge having to question their religion whenever they wish - they very often do so wish.
"Cowardly" is simply not the word that marks agnostic from atheists'. The point at issue is simply "Is the writer of the words quoted a serious thinker or a philistine headline writer?"
I guess I know the answer to that one.
E.S.