Agnostic: a pointless term?

[robvalue]

Apologies if this has been done to death before.

I think a lot about definitions and uses of words. And I've come to think that the agnostic/gnostic distinction isn't worth the confusion it causes. I've lost count of the number of people who think agnosticism is mutually exclusive to atheism.

The first problem is the definitions. If you're gnostic, you know your belief is true. If you're agnostic, you're not certain your belief is true. So the next thing is to look at what "know" means.

It's useless to say that you can know something if and only if it is actually true. By that definition, we have no idea what we actually know out of the things we know. I believe that in general usage, to know something is to have a justified belief that it is true.

So, how much justification do you need before you say you know something? I would put forward two standards.

The first is that you are claiming it is impossible that your conclusion is wrong. You may still be actually wrong, but you are definitely correct given all the available information, and considering what other information you do not know that might affect your decision. That is a bit long winded and convoluted, so you can pretty much equate it with saying you are definitely right, what you actually know is fact.

The second definition is that you are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that you are correct, (given the information you have or do not have).

In my opinion, the first definition is almost worthless. The only cases in which I think it applies is in abstract cases, where you correctly use the laws of logic to draw a conclusion from a premise, or demonstrate the premise is impossible. But in reality, most claims that are worth debating are not going to be so clear cut. So you are giving a confidence value. If I say I know something, say for example that when I drop an object it will fall, I'm saying it would be ridiculous to expect otherwise. But it's not impossible that I am wrong. The degree of confidence your give is up to you to decide. In this way, saying you know something is a claim. To demonstrate that your claim is true, you need to show how you arrived at that conclusion. Another person may then evaluate the claim, and then either agree or disagree based on their own degree of confidence.

So if we agree that for the most part a claim of knowledge is a claim of a justified belief beyond reasonable doubt, then I think the terms gnostic and agnostic are redundant. By this definition, I know there is no God, in the same way I know an object will fall when I drop it. Absolute certainty is an almost useless concept, so to insist on it at any point is to render all discussions meaningless or to hide behind solipsism.

Weirdly though, you don't really need either term when dismissing some of the most common God claims. Any claim of omnipotent, omniscient and/or omni benevolent can be defeated simply by pointing out that such a think is a logical impossibility. It contradicts both itself and reality, and to accept it could be possible would be to accept that actual contradictions can exist in reality. If you go down this route, you can again hide behind solipsism and other mental defences, but you're really just admitting you're not interested in what is possible in reality.

But towards any general God claim that isn't going the omni route, i would say that agnosticism and Gnosticism are essentially the same thing to most atheists. Saying there is an extremely tiny minute possibility that a book written 2000 years ago might in fact be all true and that the characterises in it actually exist, is just the same as saying there is a tiny minute possibility an object will float away rather than fall when I drop it.

Thanks for reading! (Sane) feedback welcome.

[bennyboy]

I think an "-ism" is just a position. If you are gnostic, it doesn't really mean you know; it means you take the position that you know. So you can have gnostic theists and gnostic atheists-- and yet most would consider those positions mutually exclusive.

An agnostic is taking the position that he doesn't know something. I do not accept this "well, anything has an infinitesimal chance of being true, so I can't claim to 'know' for sure." Of course, we are all limited, and reserve the right to update our ideas as we collect more information about things. That's more a statement of the human condition than a position, and is hardly even worth stating.

I'm agnostic because I think language breaks down long before we can reach the boundary conditions at which mysteries might be revealed. What would you call the Big Bang singularity if it were discovered that QM particles have a kind of particular "consciousness"? This would be the Prima Genitor of all we experience as humans, and that is one of the definitions of God. What if you could (maybe by integrating the human brain with all the power of the internet someday) experience a billion times more of the universe than you can with your own sense? Would this be a "religious" experience? You'd be an archetypal Man, a kind of God in your own right, wouldn't you? You might have such a massively powerful intellect that you could figure out where the universe came from, or exactly how sentience arises from matter.

And yet, even if we could have experiences which fulfill traditional definitions of Godhood, there will be those (maybe most of us these days), who would never accept that word, no matter what. I suppose you could say that reality has an infinitely higher "resolution" than language. So when asking questions about reality, the simplest answer is often "Eeep. . . errrrp. . . cannot. . . compute." And that's what I call agnosticism.

And before someone inevitably says this is actually agnostic atheism, let me preemptively call bullshit. I suspect that if a meaningful definition of God were ever coined, I would think it likely or at least plausible; but given a wildcard definition "Do you believe in _________?", the answer is "I don't know."

[robvalue]

Sure, I guess I didn't explain it too well, I'm actually saying agnostic and gnostic are rather useless. Everyone is really an agnostic by the stricter definitions, but mostly gnostic by sensible definitions. Anyone claiming to be a gnostic under a strict definition is generally being pig headed.

So instead of agnostic atheist, just atheist is fine. So my point is that adding agnostic is redundant if you're talking to sensible people with reasonable definitions. I don't think it adds anything that not being crazy wouldn't show.

[bennyboy]

Sure, I guess I didn't explain it too well, I'm actually saying agnostic and gnostic are rather useless. Everyone is really an agnostic by the stricter definitions, but mostly gnostic by sensible definitions. Anyone claiming to be a gnostic under a strict definition is generally being pig headed.

So instead of agnostic atheist, just atheist is fine. So my point is that adding agnostic is redundant if you're talking to sensible people with reasonable definitions. I don't think it adds anything that not being crazy wouldn't show.

I agree about "agnostic atheism" being redundant and mostly pointless-- to me, it's kind of a philosophical cop-out. However, I'm a declared agnostic. To me, not knowing is a meaningful position, and doesn't imply any default position. I do not, for example, like people telling me that since I'm agnostic, I have no active belief in God, and am therefore an agnostic atheist by default.

[Rarthyr500]

Sure, I guess I didn't explain it too well, I'm actually saying agnostic and gnostic are rather useless. Everyone is really an agnostic by the stricter definitions, but mostly gnostic by sensible definitions. Anyone claiming to be a gnostic under a strict definition is generally being pig headed.

So instead of agnostic atheist, just atheist is fine. So my point is that adding agnostic is redundant if you're talking to sensible people with reasonable definitions. I don't think it adds anything that not being crazy wouldn't show.

I agree about "agnostic atheism" being redundant and mostly pointless-- to me, it's kind of a philosophical cop-out. However, I'm a declared agnostic. To me, not knowing is a meaningful position, and doesn't imply any default position. I do not, for example, like people telling me that since I'm agnostic, I have no active belief in God, and am therefore an agnostic atheist by default.

A term is as pointless as you make it. To me atheism does not exist. It's a worthless term. Everyone knows deep down that we are all ONE. Search inside yourself for the answers. If you say we are not ONE, you are fooling yourself. The term atheism is the most non-existent pointless term ever devised by man. You fear the idea of God so you try to kill it with your own meaning. Atheists are FUCKED in the head, you belong in insane asylums. LITERALLY.

[robvalue]

Sure, fair enough

I guess we could just educate people more. Smash their face in until they understand the diefference between not accepting a claim, and claiming the opposite. People don't get that. Even right after you explain it, and they say yes I get it. They go right back to it.

[abaris]

I don't see the term a pointless. In the truest sense of the greek word, I am agnostic. I don't have proof for the absence of any god or greater force of nature. I simply don't believe there is one, considering all the evidence.

I would consider myself as 99.9% gnostic when it comes to the absence of the biblical god and all it's different franchises. Same goes for all the gods of ancient times.

So all in all, agnostic sits well with me, since the burden of proof has to lie with the ones making the supernatural claims.

[Alex K]

I'd say I hold at least a similar position as you do, and yet, simply labelling myself agnostic (to the extent that I feel the need to put a label at all) doesn't cut it for me. To use your words, I feel the need to advertise my opinion on how squarely the burden of proof lies with the side making supernatural claims, because it is far from understood by the majority of people. Many people I encounter who call themselves agnostics have a (to me) absolutely annoying habit of denying this one-sided burden of proof, with a fetish for going on about how we can't know anything - with an extra helping of God is love. Basically the Damon Lindelofs of internet discussion.

I don't see the term a pointless. In the truest sense of the greek word, I am agnostic. I don't have proof for the absence of any god or greater force of nature. I simply don't believe there is one, considering all the evidence.

I would consider myself as 99.9% gnostic when it comes to the absence of the biblical god and all it's different franchises. Same goes for all the gods of ancient times.

So all in all, agnostic sits well with me, since the burden of proof has to lie with the ones making the supernatural claims.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I agree about "agnostic atheism" being redundant and mostly pointless-- to me, it's kind of a philosophical cop-out.

A more charitable way of saying it would be to describe it as truth in advertising. I'm not trying to tack my jib to catch multiple winds when I call myself that; I'm merely saying that I don't know, but I certainly don't believe.

It also is useful shorthand when dealing with assholes on the Internet who want to impute positions to me that I don't hold, such as "You're stating that you know god(s) don't exist."

[Mystic]

I find it odd how agnostic atheists see so much logic in staying neutral regarding God's existence but when it comes to the possibility of knowing he exists, outright deny as possible more often then not.