Why I Am Not An Agnostic
An agnostic (a - without, and gnosis - knowledge) says that the existence of God - neither provable nor disprovable - is beyond our knowledge, and just leaves it at that. He faults the atheist for believing that God does not exist, just as much as he faults the theist, for believing that He does.
“Isn’t agnosticism really the only intellectually honest position to take? After all, you don’t really claim to know, do you? You’ve already said that almost all belief is subject to doubt; surely this applies to beliefs about God, if anything? So why aren’t you an agnostic?”
I’m not an agnostic, because of Bertrand Russell’s Celestial Teapot:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
Not only is there no good reason for believing in Celestial Teapots, there’s no good reason for even being agnostic about Celestial Teapots. The reasonable position to hold is that Celestial Teapots simply don’t exist.
The agnostic seems to believe that, because the statement “God doesn’t exist” might be false, it’s not intellectually valid or honest to believe that it is true. On the contrary, any statement, if it’s empirically meaningful at all, will be falsifiable. That doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility of deciding what we believe, nor does it shield us from the possibility that, once the decision has been made, we might be wrong after all.
lon wrote:
The celestial teapot is a good example, and as it stands, I agree with you (or Russell, as it were). Some random hypothesis, created out of thin air for no reason and which attempts to explain nothing, isn’t worthy of even an agnostic attitude towards it. But that’s not quite what we have here in this whole atheist/theist argument. Far from a random hypothesis created out of thin air, there is a definate reason God is hypothesised, and the theories of God do attempt to explain observed fact.
If the existence of tea between the Earth and Mars was observed, two theories may arise. One is that due to some accident (with an infitesimal probability), molecules came together and formed the tea. The other is that it was spilt from a nearby teapot. In this case, agnosticism is indeed the only intellectually honest position, until one of the following things happen: 1) the actual formation of tea is observed thus proving the infinite improbability theory, 2) the existence of the teapot is observed thus proving the spilt tea theory, or 3) observation proves the nonexistence of the teapot, denying the spilt tea theory. Prior to any one of these three events, belief in either theory is nothing but blind faith; agnosticism is the only proper choice.
Of course, the proponents who have blind faith in the infinite improbability theory will attempt to attack the teapot theory by saying “but you haven’t shown how the teapot got there”, but this isn’t a valid argument for the problem at hand. We’re working on a theory to explain the existence of the tea, not a theory regarding the existence of a teapot. At some future point after the tea itself has been sucessfully explained, assuming that the spilt tea theory was shown correct and a teapot has been observed, then we may begin on a theory regarding how it got there and the arguments between passionate believers can begin anew while the honest agnostics sit and watch and chuckle to themselves.
One current “Celestial Teapot” is known as dark matter. If we return to the times prior to the theories which predict dark matter, and randomly stated that it was possible that there was invisible matter in the universe, there’d be no reason to believe it or, as you say, even be agnostic about it. If you went as far as saying that there was actually more of the invisible matter than the visible matter in existence, you’d encounter nothing but derision and scorn due to the simple unbelievablity of it.
However, we currently possess a theory which has proven itself reliable time and again at explaining observable fact. This theory has considerable baggage, however, in that it requires/predicts the existence of a whole LOT of celestial teapots. Now, there is considerable reason to lend at least tenative belief in the existence of the teapots, simply to avoid gutting what is otherwise a useful theory.
My theory predicts the existence of something which made a conscious decision to create the universe; I casually refer to it as “God”. This theory addresses the issue of why we are here, and subsidiary theories based upon it sucessfully address the existence of observed facts referred to as spiritual values (love, etc), predict that natural selection will work towards producing consiousness, as well as resolve the irreducible complexity problem of that original biological cell springing to life. These theories are consistent with other known theories, such as natural selection; indeed, certain effects seen in quantum mechanics are predicted/required by my theory. In short, my theory is consistent with observable fact, other theories which explain observable fact, and serves to provide explanations for issues which either aren’t explained by existant theories or are at least problematic for those theories. Further, I am fully prepared to revise my theories as necessary to accomodate any future observed facts.
Because my theories actually strive to explain facts, and particularly because they remain consistent with both themselves and other known facts (not to mention widely accepted theories), it is thus shown that my prediction of God’s existence is specifically not a case of the “Celestial Teapot”. I did not start this theory by positing God, God is rather a prediction of the theory; the hypothesis was not random or unnecessary as seen in the teapot analogy. If you think your theory explains things better than mine, fine, but you admit that it is a *belief*; you have more faith in your theory than mine. But until someting is proven either way, agnosticism…is the only truly honest opinion.
Posted 30 Jul 2007 at 4:10 am ¶