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An Argument for Agnosticism Against Atheism
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 02:10 pm[Did you notice that of the six words in the title, five of them begin with an "A"? Awesome assonance!]
Much as I am fond of atheists and generally think the world needs more of them, I take issue with evangelical atheists who would deny agnostics the chance to sit on the theological fence. From their point of view, an agnostic is either an atheist who won't 'fess up, or an Anglican who can't be bothered to go to church. The argument runs something like this: we do not believe in leprechauns because there is no strong evidence for their existence; there is no strong evidence for the existence of God; therefore, we should not believe in God. To be an agnostic is like saying "Well, I don't actually disbelieve in leprechauns."
The logic of the leprechaun is compelling (it is known in philosophical circles as Russell's Teapot, and arguments with a genitive always win). The set of objects which can be imagined is substantially larger than the set of objects that actually exist, so all things being equal, we assume that imagined objects are imaginary. Unless you've actually seen a leprechaun with a pot of gold and all, you don't just fail to believe in leprechauns, you believe in the non-existence of leprechauns.
Theists, and even many agnostics, try to tackle the leprechaun analogy by saying that there are reasons for at least suspecting the existence of a god or gods which do not apply in the case of leprechauns. Unfortunately, the reasons proposed are not usually very good: there are arguments from personal experience, which are compelling for the person concerned but not for anyone else, arguments of the "God of the gaps" variety ("Science still hasn't explained why bread always falls with the buttered side down") and of course the argumentum ad populum that billions of people believe in God, so there has to be something in it.
Nevertheless, the leprechaun analogy has never struck me as being particularly convincing, and today while dozing in my office, I realised why. To believe in leprechauns is to make a statement to the effect that there exists some x such that x is a leprechaun. To believe in God, on the other hand, is making a statement about the universe. OK, the statement implies that there exists some x such that x is a god, but that isn't the primary claim. The primary claim varies according to your particular theology, but to keep matters simple, let's stick with the standard Abrahamic view of God. In this case, the primary claim is that the universe is the creation of some entity which pre-exists it.
Now this is a very different kind of a claim from the claim that leprechauns exist. There is an infinite number of things that could possibly exist, which makes a lot of competition for leprechauns. On the other hand, there is (probably) only one universe, and only two possibilities for its existence: it was either created or it wasn't. (At a pinch I could allow three possibilities: it was created, it always existed or it just happened.) In the absence of evidence pointing in either direction, it makes no more sense to say that the universe wasn't created than to say that it was. We should not let the stupidity of some of the arguments for its created status put us off; the only reason there aren't stupid arguments for the uncreated nature of the universe is that few people see the need to argue for this notion.
We can apply similar arguments to alternative theologies such as pantheism, panentheism and so forth. Whatever their merits or demerits, none of them are in the same class as the leprechaun argument. (An exception might be the type of paganism that asserts the existence of gods as physical or quasi-physical entities.) All of this implies that agnosticism is neither wishy-washy atheism nor closet theism and is in fact more a statement about the nature of the question we are asking than it is an answer to it.
Much as I am fond of atheists and generally think the world needs more of them, I take issue with evangelical atheists who would deny agnostics the chance to sit on the theological fence. From their point of view, an agnostic is either an atheist who won't 'fess up, or an Anglican who can't be bothered to go to church. The argument runs something like this: we do not believe in leprechauns because there is no strong evidence for their existence; there is no strong evidence for the existence of God; therefore, we should not believe in God. To be an agnostic is like saying "Well, I don't actually disbelieve in leprechauns."
The logic of the leprechaun is compelling (it is known in philosophical circles as Russell's Teapot, and arguments with a genitive always win). The set of objects which can be imagined is substantially larger than the set of objects that actually exist, so all things being equal, we assume that imagined objects are imaginary. Unless you've actually seen a leprechaun with a pot of gold and all, you don't just fail to believe in leprechauns, you believe in the non-existence of leprechauns.
Theists, and even many agnostics, try to tackle the leprechaun analogy by saying that there are reasons for at least suspecting the existence of a god or gods which do not apply in the case of leprechauns. Unfortunately, the reasons proposed are not usually very good: there are arguments from personal experience, which are compelling for the person concerned but not for anyone else, arguments of the "God of the gaps" variety ("Science still hasn't explained why bread always falls with the buttered side down") and of course the argumentum ad populum that billions of people believe in God, so there has to be something in it.
Nevertheless, the leprechaun analogy has never struck me as being particularly convincing, and today while dozing in my office, I realised why. To believe in leprechauns is to make a statement to the effect that there exists some x such that x is a leprechaun. To believe in God, on the other hand, is making a statement about the universe. OK, the statement implies that there exists some x such that x is a god, but that isn't the primary claim. The primary claim varies according to your particular theology, but to keep matters simple, let's stick with the standard Abrahamic view of God. In this case, the primary claim is that the universe is the creation of some entity which pre-exists it.
Now this is a very different kind of a claim from the claim that leprechauns exist. There is an infinite number of things that could possibly exist, which makes a lot of competition for leprechauns. On the other hand, there is (probably) only one universe, and only two possibilities for its existence: it was either created or it wasn't. (At a pinch I could allow three possibilities: it was created, it always existed or it just happened.) In the absence of evidence pointing in either direction, it makes no more sense to say that the universe wasn't created than to say that it was. We should not let the stupidity of some of the arguments for its created status put us off; the only reason there aren't stupid arguments for the uncreated nature of the universe is that few people see the need to argue for this notion.
We can apply similar arguments to alternative theologies such as pantheism, panentheism and so forth. Whatever their merits or demerits, none of them are in the same class as the leprechaun argument. (An exception might be the type of paganism that asserts the existence of gods as physical or quasi-physical entities.) All of this implies that agnosticism is neither wishy-washy atheism nor closet theism and is in fact more a statement about the nature of the question we are asking than it is an answer to it.
