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"Agnostics are Nowhere Men"

Orphia Nay

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Orphia Nay
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There's a chapter in the Australian Book of Atheism called Agnostics are Nowhere Men, and it's written by David Horton (author, retired zoologist and archaeologist).

In it, he writes:

"If you understand that there is no evidence, absolutely no evidence, no evidence of any kind, not even a scintilla of a suggestion that there might be some evidence - if only we knew where to look - for the existence of anything you might call God (or indeed anything of any supernatural kind), then you are an atheist, not an agnostic. And if you think there is such evidence, then you are a theist, not an agnostic. Let's see, that means the place for agnostics is ... nowhere. Or at least in a surreal queue waiting for evidence that there isn't even a suggestion of. A bit like waiting at a blank wall in the vain hope someone will build an ATM in front of you ... at some point, maybe.

"Being agnostic is [...] like being a little bit pregnant. Either you believe that something supernatural called "God" exists or you don't. There isn't any halfway house in this element of human culture. There is no spectrum of proof for the existence of a supernatural being ranging from no proof, through to sort of more-or-less suggestive proofs, through to strong, hard evidence. If there was such a spectrum then an atheist would be one who believed that none of the proofs were any good, a theist that all the proofs were really believable, and an agnostic that there was no hard evidence, but that some of the suggested proofs had some merit. But there isn't such a spectrum. Accepting any of the so-called proofs for the existence of God makes someone theist, not agnostic, and accepting none of them makes someone atheist, not agnostic."


I find this argument quite compelling.

What's your opinion of agnostics?
 
Agnosticism isn't fence-sitting, it's a statement about what we can and cannot know. If you believe that you cannot know whether gods exist, you're an agnostic, whether you conclude from that the gods exist or not. Atheism, in contrast, is a statement about one's believe as to whether or not a particular type of entity (gods) exists or not. The two are not comparable in the way the author is trying to compare them. One can be an agnostic atheist just as easily as one can be a red-bearded Irishman.
 
Dinwar said:
Agnosticism isn't fence-sitting, it's a statement about what we can and cannot know. If you believe that you cannot know whether gods exist, you're an agnostic, whether you conclude from that the gods exist or not. Atheism, in contrast, is a statement about one's believe as to whether or not a particular type of entity (gods) exists or not. The two are not comparable in the way the author is trying to compare them. One can be an agnostic atheist just as easily as one can be a red-bearded Irishman.
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If you believe you cannot know, and say you're an agnostic, then you're giving credence to some sort of evidence God exists, therefore you're a theist. Saying you cannot know and you're agnostic is forming an opinion based on evidence then jumping on a non-existent fence.
 
I wrote this in another thread yesterday:

If somebody does not actually believe in any gods, whether because they are for some reason certain they don't exist or whether they consider it unknowable or anything in between, I consider them to be atheists. Whether they are agnostic atheists or hard atheists or whatever depends on the various differentiating factors.
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201113

The other thread has some posts on this subject.
 
I've always been under the impression

"There is no god" = atheist
"I don't know if there is a god" = agnostic
 
That it the popular idea of it, but it's not a very good way to look at it.

If somebody doesn't believe, whether they think it's knowable or not, they are atheists.
If somebody considers it to be unknowable/untestable etc then they are agnostic.

There are agnostic atheists, agnostic theists, gnostic theists and gnostic atheists.

I think that's a better way of looking at it as they are answers to two different questions.
 
Orphia Nay said:
If you believe you cannot know, and say you're an agnostic, then you're giving credence to some sort of evidence God exists, therefore you're a theist.
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No you're not. It's accepting the scientific position that you can never say with 100% certainty that something is true. Just because, for example, gravity has never simply switched itself off doesn't mean that it won't do so in the future. It just means that the model that we have at the moment which predicts gravitational effects has thus far been accurate. And we can, and do, use it to predict future gravitational effects with a very high degree of confidence. But there must always be that uncertainty, no matter how small.

Think of it like the "is tossing 100 heads in a row impossible" thread. No, it's not impossible to do that. Is it impossible to toss 100,000 heads in a row? No, it's just very, very unlikely. How about every single coin toss from now until the end of time being heads? So unlikely as that we might as well call it impossible, but not actually impossible impossible.

To an atheist agnostic such as myself the existence of gods (or, indeed, any supernatural entity in my case) falls into the same category as the latter coin toss example. About the same probability as the world around me actually being the Matrix. Either the one from the film of the same name or the one from Doctor Who. So close to zero that I might as well call it zero in everyday speech but, if I'm being entirely accurate, actually non-zero.
 
Sceptic Tank said:
To an atheist agnostic such as myself the existence of gods (or, indeed, any supernatural entity in my case) falls into the same category as the latter coin toss example. About the same probability as the world around me actually being the Matrix. Either the one from the film of the same name or the one from Doctor Who. So close to zero that I might as well call it zero in everyday speech but, if I'm being entirely accurate, actually non-zero.
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Which is why, if the general division is atheist or theist (or even agnostic atheists, agnostic theists, gnostic theists and gnostic atheists), it's more accurate to call yourself an atheist. Otherwise you're giving too much credence to highly unlikely probabilities.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Which is why, if the general division is atheist or theist (or even agnostic atheists, agnostic theists, gnostic theists and gnostic atheists), it's more accurate to call yourself an atheist. Otherwise you're giving too much credence to highly unlikely probabilities.
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I do call myself an atheist. I also call myself an agnostic. The two are not mutually exclusive, like the article in the OP claims.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I find this argument quite compelling.
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It's an argument over how to define a word (or three words). It's not a particularly interesting or fruitful debate as far as I am concerned. "Anything you might call God" is too vague. It's not even worth discussing first agreeing on a definition for "God," and that's always a moving target.
 
I've never understood why so many people think "I don't know" is in some way an unacceptable answer.
 
Sledge said:
I've never understood why so many people think "I don't know" is in some way an unacceptable answer.
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Well, it rather depends on the question, doesn't it?

If I ask "Do you believe in God" you'd have to be pretty daft if you'd sincerely didn't know weather you did.

If I ask "Is there a god?" you might well not know - but if you then start rambling about how you cannot know anything with absolute certainty I'm just going to remind you about the twelve million dollars you owe me...
 
I have encountered people who are agnostic who say all the right things about philosophical things relating to it, like about falsifiability and whether something can generally be proven to not exist such. And then later in the conversation, they comfortably say things like "of course leprechauns don't exist, they are part of folklore".

And it becomes clear that those people are probably agnostic due to cowardice.

Also at least one of those people didn't accept the evidence for evolution.
 
Orphia Nay said:
There's a chapter in the Australian Book of Atheism called Agnostics are Nowhere Men, and it's written by David Horton (author, retired zoologist and archaeologist).

In it, he writes:

"If you understand that there is no evidence, absolutely no evidence, no evidence of any kind, not even a scintilla of a suggestion that there might be some evidence - if only we knew where to look - for the existence of anything you might call God (or indeed anything of any supernatural kind), then you are an atheist, not an agnostic. And if you think there is such evidence, then you are a theist, not an agnostic. Let's see, that means the place for agnostics is ... nowhere. Or at least in a surreal queue waiting for evidence that there isn't even a suggestion of. A bit like waiting at a blank wall in the vain hope someone will build an ATM in front of you ... at some point, maybe.

"Being agnostic is [...] like being a little bit pregnant. Either you believe that something supernatural called "God" exists or you don't. There isn't any halfway house in this element of human culture. There is no spectrum of proof for the existence of a supernatural being ranging from no proof, through to sort of more-or-less suggestive proofs, through to strong, hard evidence. If there was such a spectrum then an atheist would be one who believed that none of the proofs were any good, a theist that all the proofs were really believable, and an agnostic that there was no hard evidence, but that some of the suggested proofs had some merit. But there isn't such a spectrum. Accepting any of the so-called proofs for the existence of God makes someone theist, not agnostic, and accepting none of them makes someone atheist, not agnostic."


I find this argument quite compelling.

What's your opinion of agnostics?
Click to expand...

Nothing he said has anything to do with Agnosticism.

Agnosticism is a position on knowledge, not belief. Specifically, the Agnostic position is that we cannot know if gods exist. Belief, or lack thereof, obviously has nothing to do with this.
 
Sceptic Tank said:
To an atheist agnostic such as myself the existence of gods (or, indeed, any supernatural entity in my case) falls into the same category as the latter coin toss example. About the same probability as the world around me actually being the Matrix. Either the one from the film of the same name or the one from Doctor Who. So close to zero that I might as well call it zero in everyday speech but, if I'm being entirely accurate, actually non-zero.
Click to expand...

I've never understood the "what if we're in the Matrix" or "what if this is just a dream" argument. Well, so what? Even if that is the case, we make scientific statements about THIS world, not whatever "real world" might be outside. As long as this world adheres to empirism, it doesn't matter if it's a computer simulation or a dream, we can still make statements about it.
 
Rasmus said:
Well, it rather depends on the question, doesn't it?

If I ask "Do you believe in God" you'd have to be pretty daft if you'd sincerely didn't know weather you did.

If I ask "Is there a god?" you might well not know - but if you then start rambling about how you cannot know anything with absolute certainty I'm just going to remind you about the twelve million dollars you owe me...
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Why? Why is "I don't know" a sign that someone is daft? Why is it not a sign that either someone hasn't thought about something, or has no opinion one way or the other?
 
Sledge said:
Why? Why is "I don't know" a sign that someone is daft? Why is it not a sign that either someone hasn't thought about something, or has no opinion one way or the other?
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Because the question is very specific:

Do you believe in god?

There is no "opinion" to be had about it. And you don't have to think about the answer, either. (Unless you didn't understand the question, and I think that would qualify you as "daft" in most cases.)
 
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