RE: Why Atheism instead of agnosticism of some sort
November 5, 2010 at 3:02 pm
(This post was last modified: November 5, 2010 at 4:11 pm by Anomalocaris.)
For everything there is always a possibility that what we think is very likely to be true is in fact not true. This recognition may appear to argue one should claim to be agnostic about everything. But this application of the term agnostic is worthless because it could not be used to distinguish one's view on a particular topic, like existence of god, from his views on literally everything else.
So to use the term agnostic more meaningfully, I think one should offer some specification on just how agonostic. For example, if I jump out of an airplane at 30,000 feet without a parachute, I may be technically agnostic to a non-zero degree about whether I will plummet to my death. There is a non-zero possibility that someone else will happen to be skydiving below me at the correct moment, and I would happen to crash into his open parachute canope right as he was about to land, and the his parachute canbopy cushioned me sufficiently as it collapsed under my weight to allow me to roll out onto the ground without a scratch. But I am not agnostic about my imminent demise to a significant degree. In fact so little agnostic am I that I will do absolutely nothing to guard against the possibility that I might be asked to do an interview for the National Inquirer about how I suvived jumping out of airplane without a parachute. One might say in this case, to say "I believe I will plummet to my death if I jump without a parachute" would be much more informative of my views of the outcome then the technically correct, but unhelpful "I am agnostic about whether I will survive jumping without a parachute".
The same applies when choosing whether to use "agnostic" or "atheistic" in describing whether there is a god. I am an atheist. This is not to say I think the possibility of the existence of god is zero. I am open to god's existence. But I assessed the evidence and estimated the possibility of god's existence to be so slight that it would be as silly for me to weight that possibility heavily; To weight it heavily would be as silly as if prior to jumping out of the airplane without a parachute, I spend a long time composing a script of what I would say during the National Inquirer interview.
So to say I am agnostic is technically true, but uninformative. To say I am atheist may in some sense not be entirely true, but it is far more informative of the degree of my agnosticism.
So to use the term agnostic more meaningfully, I think one should offer some specification on just how agonostic. For example, if I jump out of an airplane at 30,000 feet without a parachute, I may be technically agnostic to a non-zero degree about whether I will plummet to my death. There is a non-zero possibility that someone else will happen to be skydiving below me at the correct moment, and I would happen to crash into his open parachute canope right as he was about to land, and the his parachute canbopy cushioned me sufficiently as it collapsed under my weight to allow me to roll out onto the ground without a scratch. But I am not agnostic about my imminent demise to a significant degree. In fact so little agnostic am I that I will do absolutely nothing to guard against the possibility that I might be asked to do an interview for the National Inquirer about how I suvived jumping out of airplane without a parachute. One might say in this case, to say "I believe I will plummet to my death if I jump without a parachute" would be much more informative of my views of the outcome then the technically correct, but unhelpful "I am agnostic about whether I will survive jumping without a parachute".
The same applies when choosing whether to use "agnostic" or "atheistic" in describing whether there is a god. I am an atheist. This is not to say I think the possibility of the existence of god is zero. I am open to god's existence. But I assessed the evidence and estimated the possibility of god's existence to be so slight that it would be as silly for me to weight that possibility heavily; To weight it heavily would be as silly as if prior to jumping out of the airplane without a parachute, I spend a long time composing a script of what I would say during the National Inquirer interview.
So to say I am agnostic is technically true, but uninformative. To say I am atheist may in some sense not be entirely true, but it is far more informative of the degree of my agnosticism.
