The Agnostic Manifesto

[Lurking_Logic]

I was recently sent this by someone
And I thought people here would appreciate the material more and give the best breakdown of the arguments

http://www.slate.com/id/2258484/pagenum/all/

So has anyone heard this before? and how well does it really stand up?

 

[australopithecus]

and how well does it really stand up?

Like a man with no legs.

Indeed agnostics see atheism as "a theism",as much a faith-based creed as the most orthodox of the religious variety. Faith-based atheism? Yes, alas. Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence,the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence.

It is a giant strawman and thankfully XKCD provided the perfect rebuttal earlier this week:

 

[Andiferous]

I'm actually agreeable to some points, although the pretentiousness and the assuredness by which he delivers them exposes a certain brand of hypocrisy. "I'm not sure of anything. So you are all wrong!" As in that great comic.

I'm rather partial to the idea that agnosticism is not a form of "weak atheism," but I do get the sense that these terms just continually get reinvented. And yes, skepticism is my god.

 

[Aught3]

Breath-taking smugness. Some of the comments stood out to me as completely galling and I found it very suspicious that the name Templeton popped up again.

At first I thought he was just making a distinction without a difference between agnosticism and what I would call atheism. This is something I've seen so many times that I'm now quite comfortable with just translating 'agnostic' as 'atheist' when I read something. He's then got a straw-stuffed atheism to unload on which I think can probably be ignored as not representing any high-profile atheist or atheists in general.

Okay the big problems:

But I do like that agnosticism, which in fact can be more combative than its image, does have a sort of punk, disruptive, troublemaker side.

Apparently he likes it when agnostics go further than saying 'I don't know' to 'we can't know'. Yet this statement is every bit as cock-sure as the supposed statements by atheists that 'we can know' currently unknowable things about the universe. Utter hypocrisy.

1. Too much of the rhetoric and sociality is tribal: Us and Them."

So true.

Yet he wants agnostics to be 'prouder and louder' to have a third category in the Us and Them dichotomy. Having clear distinctions is actually something he supports.

Like I said, it's complicated. But the world has suffered enough from oversimplifications.

Mr Rosenbaum, go fuck yourself.

 

[TheMaw]

Wow that was a bunch of pretentious and fallacious crap. It all comes down to semantics in the end, but considering that by definition, Atheism and Agnosticism (and their counterparts and some combinations) are completely compatible, most of his points just fall flat on their face.

 

[Nautyskin]

Ignorance. You want it? You got it!

Attaching this directly to toilet-roll.

 

[monitoradiation]

I couldn't get my eyes out of my eyesocket quicker than with the instant eyeroll. It's amazing what you can do with ignorance posing as wisdom.

 

[Pennies for Thoughts]

Perhaps the video of Zinnia Jones ripping this very article to shreds, which I originally posted in "Video," bears repeating here.

 

[Aught3]

That's a great monologue. I'm not sure if I agree with the use of 'certainty' but it was definitely effective.

 

[DepricatedZero]

Zing!

ZJ is awesome. I'm not certain that science will ever answer "everything" but I'm sure as hell confident that it will.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Yeah, but this guy is also the idiot who believes that anonymous bloggers using dirty words are a huge threat to democracy.

I get the distinct impression that this guy's beef with the world is that free discussion exists, and topics that he dislikes intrude into the mainstream conversation without his permission. He seems to be part of the wealthy pseudo-intellectual "gatekeeper" crowd who are deeply offended that regular folks have "crashed the party." They long for the days when publicly-expressed political views and issues were limited to whatever was of interest to the Washington beltway. They look back with nostalgia back when atheism was something that was limited to academics who would speak quietly and gently about how useful and lovely faith is, even though they didn't personally have any faith themselves.

I think ultimately, this whole thing is about Ron Rosenbaum's desire to see people who he disagrees with STFU and nothing else. That's why his entire essay is written with the tone normally reserved for small children throwing temper tantrums, and is based on one strawman after another.

 

[pdka2004]

I would write an Agnostic Manifesto, but I can't decide whether to use the blue or black pen

Anyway, agnosticism is all about acknowledging the unknowable, so why bother searching for an answer if you can never know what the question is?

 

[mirandansa]

I would write an Agnostic Manifesto, but I can't decide whether to use the blue or black pen

Anyway, agnosticism is all about acknowledging the unknowable, so why bother searching for an answer if you can never know what the question is?

The problem is: in a debate over the existence of god, the unknowable and the knowable are often mixed up or swapped for a tactical purpose. Judeo-Christian Yahweh/Jehovah/Elohim and Islamic Allah basically border on the realm of the knowable (and falsifiable) when proclaimed with specific observable traits that believers have attributed to them (with the claim that their gods interact with the real world). However, when for instance Veritas48 teamed up with Telemantros and DawahFilms against atheists, they retracted the divisive specificity of their own monotheistic notion of god, turning it into an unknowable deistic entity that they could then enjoy immunity from empirical scrutiny.

Either gnosticism or agnosticism can be elicited from an atheist, depending on the kind of god at stake. This is where I see the significance of ignosticism, which maintains that one "cannot even say whether he/she is a theist or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism

I can consider myself an ignosticist; I'm atheistic when I reject supposed-to-be-knowable monotheistic gods' existences; I'm theistic when I retain a certain sensibility for the divine character of the cosmos (like many scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, etc.), when I hold a panentheistic interpretation of the cosmos, without any belief in a supernatural "Creator".

No one can truly be only an agnostic or a gnostic for all varying definitions of "god". And we are often forced to pretend that what a theist holds as a god is the only possible "god" or even discussable at all for the sake of argument. As Sam Harris notes, the theist-atheist debate is inherently absurd. Nonetheless, we have to carry it out for the sake of reason and science:

 

[OmegaMale]

I think that the bes argument against agnosticist claims is the following (ZJ also touches on this in his excellent video):

Agnostics often seem to argue that god is unobservable and unknowable by defintion and hold this as grounds for agnosticism. However, it's exactly this that also renders agnosticism null and void. For what meaningful distinction can one draw between a god that is by definition unobservable, and a god who does not exist? Wouldn't "unobservable by definition" even amount to a definition of non-existence? And as soon as we begin to attach any attributes (omniscience) to god, we are also implying that god interacts with the universe in some way and if this interaction is to have any meaning it should also be observable.

I'd say that the reason I can't observe underpants gnomes is that they don't exist.

 

[biology4life]

Is there a term, label, whatever for asymmetrical agnosticism?
What I mean by asymmetrical is that if a god or gods did exist you could possibly (but not necessarily) know it (as much as you can know anything) I'm thinking giant floaty head in the sky or the like. However if a god or gods doesn't exist then you could not know that for sure. In other words, to me agnosticism only makes sense if there is no god or gods, because with a real god or gods there is always the possibility that it could make it's/their existence known. I'm am of course being old school with agnosticism being the position that you can not know not that you just don't know.

 

[OmegaMale]

Is there a term, label, whatever for asymmetrical agnosticism?
What I mean by asymmetrical is that if a god or gods did exist you could possibly (but not necessarily) know it (as much as you can know anything) [---] However if a god or gods doesn't exist then you could not know that for sure.

I'd say that by any definition agnosticism would necessarily be 'asymmetrical' in the way you describe, for the mere fact that what you describe seems to be a logical necessity. It is tautological that something must first exist for us to be able to observe it, because to be able to observe something that doesn't exist would be a contradiction. The second part is just saying that one can't prove a negative.

 

[Andiferous]

Call me a traditionalist but, I'm tired of reinventing new terminology for every stage of belief or nonbelief in a sort of sliding scale, that seems to indicate an easy direction to one end or another and gives the false impression that there is an answer when all is said and done.

I'm am of course being old school with agnosticism being the position that you can not know not that you just don't know.

Me too.

Agnostics often seem to argue that god is unobservable and unknowable by defintion and hold this as grounds for agnosticism. However, it's exactly this that also renders agnosticism null and void. For what meaningful distinction can one draw between a god that is by definition unobservable, and a god who does not exist? Wouldn't "unobservable by definition" even amount to a definition of non-existence? And as soon as we begin to attach any attributes (omniscience) to god, we are also implying that god interacts with the universe in some way and if this interaction is to have any meaning it should also be observable.

The choice to say one or another is deeply rooted in skepticism and humility, in my opinion. SuperSkeptics skeptical of skeptics won't take a firm position on anything and won't claim anything on absolutist terms, because to do so is to pretend to divine omniscience and that very attitude that allows for arguments on gods' existence.

Atheists often claim these types as their own, but they could also easily pass for Agnostics.

 

[OmegaMale]

Atheists often claim these types as their own, but they could also easily pass for Agnostics.

Well, maybe.

I just don't see the point in defining agnosticism in a way that would make everyone an agnostic because they cannot know the (in)existence of god in the strictest possible sense of the word 'know'. In this trivial sense we would all be agnostic, but wouldn't it be better to define agnosticism in a meaningful and non-trivial way? I think so.

I certainly don't claim to have conclusive proof of god's inexistence, I just find the arguments for god's existence unpersuasive and flawed. So ultimately it becomes a burden of proof issue. This is why I call myself an atheist, in addition to the reasons I put forth in my earlier post.

 

[lrkun]

I was recently sent this by someone
And I thought people here would appreciate the material more and give the best breakdown of the arguments

http://www.slate.com/id/2258484/pagenum/all/

So has anyone heard this before? and how well does it really stand up?

Said article tackles only a certain class of atheists; one who "Believes" that a god does not exist and the reliance on science to explain the first principles.

If you adhere to his opinion that an atheist is such; one who has faith that god does not exists and rationalizes all others, then said article hits the mark.

It is an interesting article, but to me, that's all there is to it. A nice opinion of a person who generalizes what an atheist is.

-oOo-

It's like a high school position paper. ^-^

 

[Andiferous]

Atheists often claim these types as their own, but they could also easily pass for Agnostics.

Well, maybe.

I just don't see the point in defining agnosticism in a way that would make everyone an agnostic because they cannot know the (in)existence of god in the strictest possible sense of the word 'know'. In this trivial sense we would all be agnostic, but wouldn't it be better to define agnosticism in a meaningful and non-trivial way? I think so.

I certainly don't claim to have conclusive proof of god's inexistence, I just find the arguments for god's existence unpersuasive and flawed. So ultimately it becomes a burden of proof issue. This is why I call myself an atheist, in addition to the reasons I put forth in my earlier post.

The position one takes almost seems psychological. To take a finite position (I think in some cases) closes off a person to change and prevents any need of doubt. To take the waffley position might force a person to ask questions. I suppose it really is a personal choice.