New Atheists, Agnosticism And Religion

Mano Singham has posted an interesting analysis of agnosticism and its difficulty finding an ideological home.

Atheism = "I Don't Know"

Hemant Mehta has posted on Penn Jillette's new book God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales with an excerpt from the introduction. Here are a few nuggets:

• I’m a loud, aggressive, strident, outspoken atheist, and I’m an asshole — but what I’m claiming is not in any way arrogant. It couldn’t be more humble. It’s just “I don’t know.”
• The idea that someone can claim that they know there’s a god --- is arrogant. Once you say you have the answer to everything, but you can’t prove it to anyone else, I don’t think you can accuse anyone else of being arrogant.
• Once you’ve answered “I don’t know” to the existence of a god, the answer to whether you believe in god pretty much has to be no. --- And if you don’t know, you can’t believe. Believing cannot rise out of “I don’t know.”

For this blogger's view on "I don't know", please click here.

Are Atheists Really Agnostic?

Austin Cline has posted on atheism, Christianity and agnosticism. Another example of the use of the weasel word "agnostic." As you can tell from this comment, and others on this blog, this blogger has no use for this word as it usually is used. Anyone who is sane, or not totally deluded, is agnostic about the existence of a deity, so why call yourself an agnostic?

Atheism and Agnosticim

There seems to be several definitions of atheist and agnostic (as well as god, for that matter). Thus, this blogger would like to spend a few moments in an effort to clarify the definitions of these terms.

An atheist is simply one who does not have a belief in a diety (a=without; theist=god). An agnostic is simply one who has no knowledge of a subject (a=without; gnostic=knowledge). Unfortunately, these two terms have become conflated, with the use of the term agnostic being used by some to indicate a "watered-down" position relative to non-belief in god.

Richard Dawkins had provided a 7-point scale of theist belief that seems to incorporate the true meaning of these two words:

• 1 = certain knowledge that god exists
• 7 = certain knowledge that god does not exist

This blogger places himself on the 6 point mark, as the evidence shows that it is very improbable that there is a god but there is a still some uncertainty. This opinion seems reasonable, as absolute knowledge is not possible for a human being.

Since the tools of science cannot give absolute certainly on this, or any other, question, it is the opinion of this blogger that any reasonable person is an agnostic regarding a diety. To further expand this opinion, it seems reasonable to conclude that anyone on the 1 or the 7 mark is not reasonable and is making unsupported claims based on "personal experience" and/or religious or philosophical dogma.

This blogger unequivocally states that, regarding the question of god, he is an atheist and an agnostic.