I’d love to, but I can’t claim credit for this one. It’s written by Rene, and you can find it in a long discussion thread called Why does agnosticism piss off atheists?, which I found by chance.
His metaphor is, in my opinion, brilliant:
It seems a theist might be equated to someone who was told there is an elephant in his garage and this elephant is the most important thing in his life, but don’t bother looking in the garage; you won’t be able to see him. The theist accepts the elephant and his importance, never even tries to look in the garage and dutifully goes to church and worships his invisible elephant every Sunday.
The agnostic is told the same thing as the theist. He goes and looks in the garage and does not see anything. Since he cannot see the elephant he states he does not believe in it, but at the same time, he does not disbelieve. After all he might not be very good at elephant spotting. The elephant, being gray might blend into the gray walls of the garage; he just can’t sure about this elephant in the garage, and oh by the way, he had heard there were reports of elephants in Africa, so he imagined elephants in garages are at least theoretically possible, so he would not want to rule out this possibility.
The atheist is told the same thing as the theist and agnostic. He goes and looks in the garage and does not see any elephants. He states flatly that there is no elephant in the garage. He has heard about the elephants in Africa, but feels certain one would not be hanging around in his garage and would certainly not be the most important thing in his life, if it were.
Related posts:
Subscribe to this blog
So, which position do you think is more reasonable?
If I, as an agnostic, were told that an elephant were in the garage, I would make absolutely sure what an elephant was before deciding if there was one or not. Your idea of what an elephant is could be completely different than what my idea of an elephant is. The idea of “god” as an all-knowing creator that gave us life seems ridiculous to me. But maybe “god” is something else.
A single cell organism is alive, right? Do you think an amoeba has the intelligence to even begin to comprehend what a human being is? Does a single cell of your body understand what you as an individual are? Maybe in the same way that such a simple form of life can’t comprehend what we are, we don’t have the intelligence to even begin to understand what “god” is.
oops… I hit the submit button before I was done.
I completely agree with atheists that there is no such thing as the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc idea of God. But I differ from atheists in that I’m still open to the idea that “god” could be a vastly superior intelligence. So superior, that we are maybe as insignificant to “god” as an amoeba floating in a pond is to us.
It almost seems foolhardy to me to think that this isn’t a possibility. How much have we learned as a people in the last 100 years. It’s astounding to think of the global rise in knowledge of the last century. I know my numbers are wrong here, but isn’t there something like 50 billion stars in our galaxy? And 500 billion galaxies? Even with the astounding increase of our knowledge, we’ve only figured out a little bit about our one planet and our system of physics etc… Isn’t it somewhat arrogant to claim that we know enough to say there isn’t a “god”?
Jon: please read this.
[quote comment="5151"]If I, as an agnostic, were told that an elephant were in the garage, I would make absolutely sure what an elephant was before deciding if there was one or not. Your idea of what an elephant is could be completely different than what my idea of an elephant is.[/quote]
This is the same cop out as “not being good at elephant spotting.” While I would allow that there could be different levels of knowledge, it all comes down to being a big grey mammal.
[quote comment="5152"]But I differ from atheists in that I’m still open to the idea that “god” could be a vastly superior intelligence. So superior, that we are maybe as insignificant to “god” as an amoeba floating in a pond is to us.[/quote]
So you’d be open to the possibility of Yog-Sothoth?
And of course, Pedro beats me to the reply.
Thanks Pedro…
I read the essay in it’s entirety, and it describes my exact opinion. I call myself agnostic, but the author calls himself atheist.
An online dictionary defined “agnostic” as:
“1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something ”
And defined “atheism” as:
“2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity”
So I’m sticking with agnostic as the best description of my opinion. While I think it’s most likely that there is no god, and I live my life as if there isn’t, I’m not willing to state a belief that there isn’t one. Isn’t stating a belief that there is no god on the same level as stating a belief that there is one?
Jon: I see agnosticism as something like: “I can’t be sure that gravity will still work tomorrow. Sure, it has always been in effect during my whole life, and historians don’t mention a time where gravity stopped working, but who can say that it will still be active tomorrow? There’s no way to be sure, so I have to be open to that possibility.”
Atheism is like “gravity will still be in effect tomorrow.”
Is the atheist using “faith” in order to be sure of that fact? Some could say so, but…
I believe gravity will still be in effect tomorrow, but there’s no way to be sure that there are (or are no) deity greater than us above the universe… or before the Big Bang.
Btw, I consider myself an atheist, I do not believe in gods invented by men.
[quote comment="5178"]I believe gravity will still be in effect tomorrow, but there’s no way to be sure that there are (or are no) deity greater than us above the universe… or before the Big Bang.[/quote]
If there are, as it says in the essay I quoted in the other post:
- there’s no way we’ll ever know, or be able to communicate with it;
- it doesn’t know we even exist;
- we are a random product of the universe; it certainly wasn’t designed for life, since more than 99.999% of it is either vaccuum or stars;
- it created a 100% natural universe, which doesn’t need a god to function at all;
- it doesn’t affect our lives in any way (really, the idea that an infinite being would bother creating a “heaven” and a “hell”…)
[quote comment="5183"][quote comment="5178"]I believe gravity will still be in effect tomorrow, but there’s no way to be sure that there are (or are no) deity greater than us above the universe… or before the Big Bang.[/quote]
If there are, as it says in the essay I quoted in the other post:
- there’s no way we’ll ever know, or be able to communicate with it;
- it doesn’t know we even exist;
- we are a random product of the universe; it certainly wasn’t designed for life, since more than 99.999% of it is either vaccuum or stars;
- it created a 100% natural universe, which doesn’t need a god to function at all;
- it doesn’t affect our lives in any way (really, the idea that an infinite being would bother creating a “heaven” and a “hell”…)[/quote]
I totaly agree on all the points you listed above.
But, as a rational being, I feel it’s an intellectual duty we have, be it only for oneself, to seek for the truth.
There are places where our puny mind come to a full stop when trying to explain some things, like where the universe is located, how the concept of time can be explain or how was it like before the Big Bang.
Facing those issues, we have no choice but to admint that we simply have no clue at all.
To quote Hubert Reeves, an astronomer:
[quote]If there is a God, all he did was give it a go, the rest happenned all by itself”. I kinda agree with that.[/quote]
But yeah, whatever the answers are, there’s still no cloud-beds in heaven, nor red devil dudes with forks in hell. We agreed on that.