Way of the Mind

Although the terms atheism and agnosticism have well defined meanings, I think that it would be of interest to separate each term into general and specific forms, because some common logical contradictions may become clear(er) by doing so…

1. General atheism- “there is no god.” This includes me, and anyone who describes him or herself as “atheist”.
2. Specific atheism- “this particular god doesn’t exist.” Most theists are, actually, specific atheists about every god but theirs.
3. General agnosticism- “it’s impossible to know whether a god exists.” Self-described “agnostics” should, in theory, be here. However…
4. Specific agnosticism- “it’s impossible to know whether this particular god exists.”

You probably know examples of each.

As I said, “true” atheists are general atheists. To them, it makes no sense to discriminate between one god and the other; they’re all fictional.

It would seem that the same would apply to agnostics, right? An agnostic should be one who can’t say whether there’s a god - any god at all - or not.

But, in fact, most self-described “agnostics” are really specific agnostics about one or more gods (usually, the most popular one where they live, which is, in most cases, the Christian god), and specific atheists about the rest. Which is a strange, hard to understand double standard, if you ask me.

In other words, most “agnostics” are agnostic about some form of monotheistic, all-powerful god, but they reject gods from extinct mythologies, such as the Greek, Roman, or Norse gods. They also, usually, reject gods from polytheistic religions, such as Hinduism or Native American Animism. They may not explicitly say so, but they don’t think that the chance of Yahweh existing (which is a question they’ve washed their hands of) is the same as the chance of Thor existing.

Why is that? I’d say it’s some form of cultural pressure, added to the fact that agnostics often are agnostic because they don’t care to think much about the subject (as someone said, “an atheist is an agnostic who’s thought about it.”).

I’m not saying that true, general agnostics don’t exist; however, most of the ones I talked to ended up showing themselves to be as I described above: agnostic about one god (or “type” of god), atheistic about the rest of them. A true agnostic, to me, would believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be as likely to exist as Yahweh or Allah. “But,” you say, “the FSM was invented just last year…” However, is the age of a myth a deciding factor? If so, there are much older mythologies than Christianity or even Judaism… Wouldn’t that make them even more likely to be true?

Another reply is “this god makes some sense, and could therefore exist, while those other gods are clearly absurd and man-made”. But… if you say that, you are judging. How dare you? Seriously, what makes you qualified to judge some gods as “absurd” and others as “plausible”? Could it be the same power of reason that you, yourself, admit is too weak and fallible to judge whether there is a god or not (otherwise, you wouldn’t be an agnostic, right?)?

In conclusion: looking at the list above, atheists are 1. Theists are 2 about every god but theirs. Agnostics should, theoretically, be 3, but in reality most of them are a mix of 4 about one or two gods, and 2 about every other deity.

Any thoughts?

(you may want to read parts one and two as well.)

Sometimes, you try to get your point across in some way, with mixed results, and then, later, you read something which was exactly what you wanted to have said in the first place.

One such example was this page. Near the beginning, the author says what he believes is wrong about agnosticism, and does it more succinctly and clearly than I did before:

[...] agnosticism is defined as being unable to know if God exists. However, this concept is intellectually dishonest in that while maintaining there is no evidence of God or the supernatural, it refuses to make the intellectually honest conclusion that therefore God most likely does not exist. Agnosticism suggests that the existence and non-existence of God are equally likely. Without evidence of God’s existence, the non-existence hypothesis is heavily favored, but agnosticism ignores this.

Touché.