Agnostic Universe

There’s a Slate article by Ron Rosenbaum on An Agnostic Manifesto as well as an Atheist response article by PZ Myers called “New Agnostics” or “Same Old Ineffectual Wafflers”.

First, I’ll reiterate that I continue to concur with the prevailing view that agnosticism is not a “third way” from theism and atheism. However, agnostic theists are focused on their faith and have no use for the agnostic label or qualifier since for them knowledge has no importance and their faith is all that matters. Those that argue agnosticism does not stand alone successfully argue that atheism means nothing more than being without (a-) theism. It is not synonymous with anti-theism (gnostic atheist?) so to proclaim to be atheist is only to claim “I don’t believe that.” I believe agnostic atheist is the correct worldview and that the Agnostic label alone says the most for my belief. I don’t just simply “not believe that” but do believe that “we do not know.” I am Agnostic. Yes, a big letter Agnostic could semantically be theist or atheist but in practice I only know agnostics to be “without theism.” I think I’m safe to assume I can use agnostic without atheist and not get lumped in with Christians or other theistic groups.

The New Agnostics article tries to carve out agnosticism as completely different from atheism in general. Agnosticism is really only a different view from the hardline anti-theism or a strong atheism if it were akin to gnostic atheism. Read Huxley, Ingersoll, and Russell and you’re reading people that could easily use a broad “without theism” label. It’s just that the label wasn’t the right fit for them personally and didn’t say enough about what they really thought about being outside of theistic belief. They all gravitated towards what Huxley created in the term Agnostic. I agree with Ron that agnosticism isn’t an exact subcomponent of atheism but that is just because it concerns knowledge and not faith so semantically it isn’t just “weak atheism.” However, in common practice I wouldn’t see a problem with agnostic and weak atheism becoming synonymous. There is no dogma to being outside of theistic belief, so why not?

You can read through both articles but it really comes down to what PZ Myers closes with:

I know he hates it when we say this, but Wilkins is awfully hard to distinguish from any other atheist, except for the fact that he insists on the label “agnostic”. If it makes him feel any better, he can always call the rest of us agnostics, too. We’ll humor him.

Exactly! I’ve personally backed off from the notion that agnosticism is unique from atheism. We are all truly agnostic atheists as a total set of labels concerning knowledge and faith. If you bother to use a label at all for this subject it’s easier to use just one and for reasons I’ve already described above I believe either one is fine to distinguish yourself from theists.

If I’m a “New Agnostic” then I’m just here to proclaim that we are all agnostic and atheist. Agnostic is a perfectly respectable label to use for a viewpoint on theism even though it is about knowledge and not faith. Just know that Agnostic as a standalone label generally implies that you are not a theist and are therefore also a-theist. Now get back to your lives, family, and friends and just enjoy what you do know.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 11:54 am and is filed under Agnosticism, Atheism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.