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There is an awful lot of misunderstanding about the words "atheism" and "agnosticism". I see a lot of atheists hide behind the word "agnostic" because they "don't know for sure" or don't want to piss anyone off. And that's incorrect. They are still atheists. People also like to claim that atheism is a "belief that no god exists" and is therefore the same as a religion. As someone once said (and I wish I could remember who), to say that atheism is a religion is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Let's look at the words themselves.
Gnostic: from the Greek word "knowledge".
Theism: belief in a deity or deities.
A (prefix): without.
First, the prefix "a" means only "without" or "absence of". It does not make any assertions, claims, or statements as to the presence of anything. I don't have a stamp collection. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about not collecting stamps and I don't do anything in particular to avoid collecting stamps. I just don't collect stamps. I am atimbromanic (without stamp collecting). No reasonable person would then say that I have a hobby of not collecting stamps. It is an absence of collecting stamps, not an active not-collecting activity.
An atheist, is simply lacking a belief in a deity.
An agnostic is simply lacking *knowledge* of something.
I can be agnostic about the conflict in the Middle East. It doesn't mean that I don't believe there is a conflict. It means I don't know anything about it. Maybe I don't believe there is a conflict, or maybe I do, but I don't have knowledge about it. Many people are agnostic about urban legends or conspiracy theories. They don't *know* because they don't have any evidence, but they can believe anyway because it somehow "makes sense" or makes someone "feel" something they want to feel. Ever hear someone say "well, I don't know for sure, but I *heard*__ and it makes sense to me"? That's agnosticism.
One word is about knowing something, and the other word is about believing something. These are two different concepts. To know something is to be aware of the truth or factuality of it (where "truth" is empirical and either is or is not true - none of this "my truth" bullshit that refers to personal opinion or subjective feelings). But to believe is to accept a claim without necessarily having proof, evidence, or even plausibility, without "knowing" the truth. One word relies on empirical evidence, outside of oneself, and the other relies on one's *feelings*, an internal sense.
And because these are two separate concepts, they are not mutually exclusive. One can have belief without having knowledge, or one can have belief because one has knowledge. One can lack belief because one lacks knowledge, or one can lack belief because one has knowledge of that belief's falsehood.
People can also be atheistic about some deities but theistic about others, and people can be agnostic about some things and gnostic about others.
For example, Christians are atheistic about the Greek gods. They do not believe in them and consider them "false idols". They do not believe they ever existed. But they are, of course, theistic about their god. This person would be gnostic about, both, his theism of his god and his atheism of other gods. He would "know" that his god exists and others don't.
Meanwhile, an Atheist can be gnostic about the Abrahamic god because the atheist has evidence that is incompatible with the definition of the Abrahamic god, but may be agnostic about the existence of a god of some sort - maybe one that hasn't been defined yet. The Atheist may be willing to admit that some sort of supernatural deity is possible because "we just don't know" while simultaneously rejecting the gods presented thus far because the definitions contradict what we know of the universe. So this person's atheism would be simultaneously agnostic about some gods and gnostic about others.
Here's a handy little chart to help illustrate the point:
Now where this gets complicated, is that any good scientist or science-minded person very rarely makes emphatic, declarative statements. Because the nature of science is that we don't have "the answers", we have a good working definition that is subject to revision if a better definition comes along.
So even most "Strong Atheists", people who claim to "know" there is no god, don't actually mean they "know" with 100% certainty that there is absolutely no god or supernatural being of any sort. That's where the "atheism = religion" people get tripped up. When a Gnostic Atheist says "there is no god", what he usually means is that all the evidence *so far* supports the idea that there is no god. He also usually means that there is *enough* evidence to be "reasonably certain" that there is no god, certain *enough* to act as though there isn't. He is also usually willing to change his mind with sufficent evidence and believe in a god, it's just that no one has presented him with enough evidence yet, and enough evidence to the contrary exists to continue on through life without a belief in god.
But when a Theist claims to "know" there is a god, more often than not, this is where you get dogma. This is a person, usually, who absolutely will not change his opinion, even in the face of evidence, and who holds his unquestioning faith in the face of contradictory evidence as a virtue. This is often a person who takes pride in the fact that his belief withstands contradiction, usually because his religion dictates that unquestioning obedience is required. Pretty good population control, actually, to convince people that they *want* to blindly believe what this guy says even when presented with contrary evidence.
So when we have two groups of people using the same word in totally different ways, we end up with some religious people accusing Atheists of being dogmatic, having a "belief", and having "faith", because the Theist's definition of "know" incorporates those elements even when the Atheist's definition of "know" does not.
So, one more time for those who didn't get it the first dozen times.
Atheism means "without belief in god" and that's it.
Theism means "belief in a god or deity" and that's it.
Agnosticism means "without knowledge" and that's it.
Gnosticsm means "knowledge" and that's it.
Atheism does not mean "a belief that there is no god".
Agnosticism is not a middle ground between Atheism and Religion.
For those who prefer visuals or audio, as opposed to text, here's a very cute girl explaining the difference in a video:
For the record, I am a Gnostic Atheist about all deities so far proposed, while I am an Agnostic Atheist about all supernatural entities not yet proposed. I lack the belief in the supernatural because I possess knowledge that contradicts claims made by beliefs in the supernatural. All deities so far proposed are internally inconsistent and cannot therefore be possible. But I cannot claim to know ALL possibilities, even those not yet proposed, so I am "agnostic" with regards to those claims not yet researched but I believe them to be unlikely. The evidence for a universe without supernatural elements is compelling enough for me to be reasonably certain that there is no god, and certain enough for me to live as though it were true.
Let's look at the words themselves.
Gnostic: from the Greek word "knowledge".
Theism: belief in a deity or deities.
A (prefix): without.
First, the prefix "a" means only "without" or "absence of". It does not make any assertions, claims, or statements as to the presence of anything. I don't have a stamp collection. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about not collecting stamps and I don't do anything in particular to avoid collecting stamps. I just don't collect stamps. I am atimbromanic (without stamp collecting). No reasonable person would then say that I have a hobby of not collecting stamps. It is an absence of collecting stamps, not an active not-collecting activity.
An atheist, is simply lacking a belief in a deity.
An agnostic is simply lacking *knowledge* of something.
I can be agnostic about the conflict in the Middle East. It doesn't mean that I don't believe there is a conflict. It means I don't know anything about it. Maybe I don't believe there is a conflict, or maybe I do, but I don't have knowledge about it. Many people are agnostic about urban legends or conspiracy theories. They don't *know* because they don't have any evidence, but they can believe anyway because it somehow "makes sense" or makes someone "feel" something they want to feel. Ever hear someone say "well, I don't know for sure, but I *heard*__ and it makes sense to me"? That's agnosticism.
One word is about knowing something, and the other word is about believing something. These are two different concepts. To know something is to be aware of the truth or factuality of it (where "truth" is empirical and either is or is not true - none of this "my truth" bullshit that refers to personal opinion or subjective feelings). But to believe is to accept a claim without necessarily having proof, evidence, or even plausibility, without "knowing" the truth. One word relies on empirical evidence, outside of oneself, and the other relies on one's *feelings*, an internal sense.
And because these are two separate concepts, they are not mutually exclusive. One can have belief without having knowledge, or one can have belief because one has knowledge. One can lack belief because one lacks knowledge, or one can lack belief because one has knowledge of that belief's falsehood.
People can also be atheistic about some deities but theistic about others, and people can be agnostic about some things and gnostic about others.
For example, Christians are atheistic about the Greek gods. They do not believe in them and consider them "false idols". They do not believe they ever existed. But they are, of course, theistic about their god. This person would be gnostic about, both, his theism of his god and his atheism of other gods. He would "know" that his god exists and others don't.
Meanwhile, an Atheist can be gnostic about the Abrahamic god because the atheist has evidence that is incompatible with the definition of the Abrahamic god, but may be agnostic about the existence of a god of some sort - maybe one that hasn't been defined yet. The Atheist may be willing to admit that some sort of supernatural deity is possible because "we just don't know" while simultaneously rejecting the gods presented thus far because the definitions contradict what we know of the universe. So this person's atheism would be simultaneously agnostic about some gods and gnostic about others.
Here's a handy little chart to help illustrate the point:
| Atheism (without belief) | Theism (with belief | |
| Agnostic (without knowledge) | Lack of belief in a deity or god, and lack of knowledge about the truth of the belief. This is a person who might say "There probably is no god, but we don't really know for sure". This person makes no positive assertions about the existance or non-existence of deities, but lacks *belief* in a deity. Also called "Weak Atheism" | A belief in a deity, but lack of knowledge about the truth of the belief. This is a person who might say "I believe there is a god, but there is no way to really know for sure". This person makes no positive assertions about the existance or non existence of deities, but believes in one or some without that certainty. Also called "Weak Theism" |
| Gnostic (with knowledge) | Lack of belief in a deity or god but claim of knowledge that this is the truth. This is a person who might say "I *know* there is no god". This person makes a positive assertion about the lack of a deity. Also called "Strong Atheism" | Belief in a deity or god and also a claim of knowledge that this is the truth. This is a person who might say "There IS a god, I know it for certain and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise." This person makes a positive assertion about the existence of a diety. Also called "Strong Theism" |
Now where this gets complicated, is that any good scientist or science-minded person very rarely makes emphatic, declarative statements. Because the nature of science is that we don't have "the answers", we have a good working definition that is subject to revision if a better definition comes along.
So even most "Strong Atheists", people who claim to "know" there is no god, don't actually mean they "know" with 100% certainty that there is absolutely no god or supernatural being of any sort. That's where the "atheism = religion" people get tripped up. When a Gnostic Atheist says "there is no god", what he usually means is that all the evidence *so far* supports the idea that there is no god. He also usually means that there is *enough* evidence to be "reasonably certain" that there is no god, certain *enough* to act as though there isn't. He is also usually willing to change his mind with sufficent evidence and believe in a god, it's just that no one has presented him with enough evidence yet, and enough evidence to the contrary exists to continue on through life without a belief in god.
But when a Theist claims to "know" there is a god, more often than not, this is where you get dogma. This is a person, usually, who absolutely will not change his opinion, even in the face of evidence, and who holds his unquestioning faith in the face of contradictory evidence as a virtue. This is often a person who takes pride in the fact that his belief withstands contradiction, usually because his religion dictates that unquestioning obedience is required. Pretty good population control, actually, to convince people that they *want* to blindly believe what this guy says even when presented with contrary evidence.
So when we have two groups of people using the same word in totally different ways, we end up with some religious people accusing Atheists of being dogmatic, having a "belief", and having "faith", because the Theist's definition of "know" incorporates those elements even when the Atheist's definition of "know" does not.
So, one more time for those who didn't get it the first dozen times.
Atheism means "without belief in god" and that's it.
Theism means "belief in a god or deity" and that's it.
Agnosticism means "without knowledge" and that's it.
Gnosticsm means "knowledge" and that's it.
Atheism does not mean "a belief that there is no god".
Agnosticism is not a middle ground between Atheism and Religion.
For those who prefer visuals or audio, as opposed to text, here's a very cute girl explaining the difference in a video:
For the record, I am a Gnostic Atheist about all deities so far proposed, while I am an Agnostic Atheist about all supernatural entities not yet proposed. I lack the belief in the supernatural because I possess knowledge that contradicts claims made by beliefs in the supernatural. All deities so far proposed are internally inconsistent and cannot therefore be possible. But I cannot claim to know ALL possibilities, even those not yet proposed, so I am "agnostic" with regards to those claims not yet researched but I believe them to be unlikely. The evidence for a universe without supernatural elements is compelling enough for me to be reasonably certain that there is no god, and certain enough for me to live as though it were true.
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no subject
Date: 9/25/09 08:25 am (UTC)From:-The use of the word 'gnostic' in these arguments as a 'natural opposite' of 'agnostic' has always struck me sideways a bit, like hearing a homosexual person half-heartedly trying to reclaim the word 'fag'. The reason being the gnosticism came first, as a catch-all term for early Greek and Middle Eastern philosophers who we don't really know much about but we're pretty sure believed in an intuitive, natural knowledge of a god. Later groups picked up the term, especially in Christianity. The word 'Agnostic' is somewhat of a corruption of the negative of the word 'Gnostic', which is a corruption of the word 'Gnosis' or 'Ginosko', which means approximately 'to have an incomplete knowledge of'. Therefore, to call someone an 'Agnostic', by a purely literal, mildly corrupted definition instead of a cultural one, is to say they 'do not have incomplete knowledge of' something.
Cutting short my leap into linguistics, 'Agnosticism' is not only derived from Thomas Huxley's poor grasp of Hellenic Greek, but also as a clever contrast to the word 'Gnostic'. When Thomas Huxley first started throwing the world around, it had specifically religious meaning. He also stated that, though it specifically meant to him a rejection of all forms of religious or spiritual knowledge, the fact that it seemed to be particularly contrary to the 'Gnostics' was something her particularly enjoyed. And then again, in the last 5 years or so, the word has been corrupted again to the definition you give here, that is, 'a lack of knowledge' on any subject, religious or otherwise.
And beyond that, agnosticism transcends simply 'not having knowledge' and enters into the realm of 'lacking the ability to have knowledge', at least in the classical sense (or the Joshist-classical sense). Not having knowledge is still within the realm of epistemology; agnosticism deals more with the world without.
Perhaps better would be to use the Greek word 'Episteme', root of the word 'epistemology'. You are an epistemic atheist, one who possesses knowledge that contradicts claims made by beliefs in the supernatural. Which segues nicely into my other stumble:
-Although I'm now out of the hard sciences for the most part, one particular word of advice has always stuck with me: NEVER, EVER EVER EVER use the words 'prove' or 'truth' or anything else that makes it seem like your results are always right when writing grant request papers. Once you get down into hard science, words like 'always' or 'never' or any other similar terms (like those presented here and elsewhere as 'gnostic' or 'agnostic') are stripped from your vocabulary and replaced with 'seems to indicate' or 'has a high positive correlation' or 'seems to have no correlation'.
It's most certainly my own agnostic (in the classical sense) bias raising it's head, but every time someone brings science into a religious argument I always feel like someone just showed up at a baseball game with a dissertation on Hobbes. There are, I think, some questions science will never be able to answer, not because science is in some way deficient, but because the questions are DUMB. It seems like you could no more apply science to the question of 'Is there a god/s?' and get a coherent answer than you could apply it to the question 'Will I be rich and famous some day?'. We could apply principles of estimation, of extrapolation, of just about any method you want to use, but when Bobby breaks his big, dumb head and sues McDonalds for millions and we all die and wake up facing down a three-headed dog, the scientists will sit there and go 'Huh. Interesting.'
The point there being that while a atheist's definition of 'know' is different from a theist's definition of 'know', scientists don't even have a word for it. And any scientist who says otherwise is probably a) a Christian Scientist, b) writing a grant paper, c) not very careful with their words or d) tenured.
Yep. That was probably more writing than I necessarily should have written at this hour. Hopefully it won't sound dumb to me in 12 hours.
no subject
Date: 9/25/09 08:27 am (UTC)From:This post was edited to use the picture I should have used on the above.
That is all.
no subject
Date: 9/25/09 12:17 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 9/25/09 06:34 pm (UTC)From:It's just that using those terms to laypeople implies a wishywashy false sense of uncertainty or even authority, when that might harm one's argument.
Lots of scientists argue the use of the word "know" and leaving out all those backdoor "high positive correlation" phrases because they debate the necessity of speaking at the level of their audience vs. being as accurate as possible.
Everything you said here doesn't *actually* contradicting what I said, it's just adding more background than is necessary when trying to introduce a concept to someone who is unfamiliar. It's like when a little kid asks why the sky is blue, and mommy says it's because when the sunlight hits the air, it looks blue to us, but then daddy comes in with a lecture on wavelengths and gas particles.
no subject
Date: 9/25/09 09:40 pm (UTC)From:To state my point a little bit more confrontationally, then: To use the words 'gnostic' and 'agnostic' in the way they're used here is like taking a fellow who's been mugged and beaten up and shat on by everybody from Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Huxley and then bending his arm up behind his back and beating his head in. It tries to assign definitions that have nothing to do with the root of the word by misinterpreting the philosophical arguments of 19th century fuck-twats who made up words because they sounded 'clever' (I'm looking at you, Huxley).
I mean, I could understand if the atheist community as a whole was trying to reclaim the words 'gnostic' and 'agnostic' to mean 'having knowledge of' or 'lacking knowledge of', but that doesn't seem to be what they're up to; it just seems like they're superciliously ret-con-ing the Hellenic Greek language to mean whatever the fuck-all they want it to.
The point is, from a socially constructed definition, 'agnostic' and 'gnostic' don't mean what atheists who came up with that 4-way chart fuckfest want them to mean, and, from a concretely constructed definition, they don't either.
And then there's the scientists who go on daytime talk shows and argue with Gnostics (the actual ones, mind you) and tell them "We scientists KNOW that evolution works" to counter their assertions that "We Gnostics KNOW that we have a personal, intuitive knowledge of God". But the whole thing is just missing the point; why the fuck are the scientists on the daytime talk shows arguing with religious fucks? They should be in LABS, doing SCIENCE. Once again, if, by speaking at the level of your audience, you have to leave out all the words that make science ACCURATE, you're kind of missing the point of science. Science is not here to tell us whether it was Odin or Jesus or Zenu that ruined your life; they're here to tell us HOW your life was ruined (ie, mgh=E, where E is how much it's going to suck being under that poorly secured piano in a few seconds).
I think that our two differing opinions on the subject come from the two different places we get the information that structures our opinions, ie, you, from Skeptic and Atheist speakers and podcasts, and myself, from grad students and professors. The difference being that the Skeptic/Atheist/Podcasting/Speechmaking communities are much more interested in "changing the public discourse on science and religion", whereas grad students and professors are much more interested in getting grant money to pay for the ridiculously complicated and expensive experiments they want to preform to test their hypotheses.
*Once again, edited for dickishness and userpic. Although the dickishness is pretty rampant in this one to make my disagreeableness more apparent.
I also think that in this debate, I identify more as a 'contrarian' than anything else. XD
no subject
Date: 9/27/09 06:59 pm (UTC)From:You're being a dick, Josh, and I don't appreciate your "debating" style in my journal. Fuck off.
no subject
Date: 9/25/09 10:30 am (UTC)From:I would term myself a radical agnostic. By this I mean that I strongly believe (and given time that I don't have now can explain logically) that it is *impossible* ever to know whether a higher power or powers really exist or not, and that in fact it is rather irrelevant to the way we live our lives.
I'd love to waffle about it more, but have a seminar to go to!
M.
no subject
Date: 9/25/09 04:15 pm (UTC)From:However, it should be noted that I also admit the possibility that my car will suddenly turn into a giant pumpkin. It's theoretically possible that all the molecules will rearrange themselves into a shape approximating a pumpkin, but the chances of that happening are so slim as to not be worth thinking about. Same thing with a god: the chance is there, but it is so small that it is not worth considering.
no subject
Date: 9/25/09 06:59 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 10/1/09 11:45 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 9/29/09 10:30 am (UTC)From:http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/
no subject
Date: 2/7/11 12:48 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)