"Atheist" is a stupid word. So is "agnostic." The fact that we need both words is even stupider.
If you are a nonbeliever, you have probably heard the argument: "You can't disprove the existence of God." You might have heard it from a believer, or from a politically sensitive agnostic, but the basic assumption is that atheism means thinking that the existence of God can be disproved.
This argument is a ruse. Don't be deceived.
Atheists don't have to DISprove anything. There is nothing to disprove. You don't have to disprove something when there was never any evidence for it in the first place. Someone told us something, but they didn't present any evidence for it, so we didn't believe it. That is all there is to being an atheist. The burden of proof is on the believer, and if they can't provide it, the default assumption should be that there is nothing there.
This is the same reason why claiming that atheism is a religious belief is absolutely ridiculous. Why would not specifically believing something be itself a religious belief? Just because we aren't buying something doesn't mean that we are selling something else.
Imagine that I am sitting at a table with two other people. One of them says: "There is an invisible gnome in the middle of the table. He wants you to cut off your pinky finger, or he will use his gnome magic to destroy your soul after you die." Then he cuts off his finger. If you don't specifically believe him, and don't cut your finger off because the whole thing seems completely retarded, is that a religious belief? Do you really need a specific word (presumably "agnomist") to describe you?
Or what if the next day, and for every day after, a different person came in and told you that something else invisible was sitting in the middle of the table: a fairy, a dragon, a ghost... all without a single shred of evidence, and you see no reason to believe any of it, as every time there is clearly nothing there. Are you a polytheist now? Do you need a separate word to describe you for every unsubstantiated thing you don't believe?
Or, imagine this. After the Gnomist mutilates himself, you start stabbing the empty air over the table with your finger and shouting, "Look, you goddamn psychopath, there is nothing there!" (while conspicuously not cutting off your pinky). The third person sits with his hands folded complacently and says: "The existence of the gnome has not been proven" (also conspicuously not cutting off his pinky). Is the difference between you and him really so strong that we would need two different words to describe you? Neither of you believe in the fucking gnome! The difference is just one of temperament.
Why does not specifically believing in God need a word to describe it? Why do two slightly different shades of disbelief (agnostic and atheist) need to be distinguished? There is only one reason: Because so many people do believe in this one specific unsubstantiated thing (God), that they treat belief as the default. Atheism and agnosticism therefore become verbs, as though they require some kind of action, and not believing something with slightly different degrees of equivocation therefore become two different actions.
Don't let them get away with that. You don't have to do shit. It's Sunday, so sit back and take it easy, and let them do the work of getting dressed up and driving themselves to church.
This is the first Christmas song to actually bring a tear to my eye.
LNJ
Arthur Conan-Doyle on Mesozoic reptiles
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Good post.
My dear Jeffery,
While I feel that your post is indeed the most logical argument I've read for this particular viewpoint, I would like to counter with the oft repeated whispering that, indeed, if we all call the tune, the Piper will lead us to reason.
Regards,
M. Brown
Hell yes.
Do the lyrics actually mean something? I just thought that they were really, really high.
Original version here:
White Wine In The Sun by Tim Minchin
This is a good one too:
If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out by Tim Minchin
I meant Zepplin. I didn't mean to imply that Tim Minchin was high. His lyrics were pretty straightforward.
I always thought the difference was a degree of certainty? Agnosticism accepts a possibility, whereas Atheism just says 'sod off not real'?
A mild coincidence, I booked to see Tim Minchin today....
A nice video summary of lack of belief in gods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNDZb0KtJDk
"Degree of certainty" is my understanding of the distinction between atheism and agnosticism, in which case I flip flop back and forth between being an atheist and agnostic on a daily basis...just like I do about any other question about reality.
To translate my invisible gnome analogy into something more real-life: our current understanding of Late Triassic dinosaur dispersal is that there were no prosauropods in North America at the time, as all putative fossils of prosauropods have been shown to be either undiagnostic, or referrable to something else.
If I state "there were no prosauropods in North America during the Late Triassic" (and don't include them in my faunal list), and someone else says "the presence of prosauropods in North America during the Late Triassic has not been proven" (and also doesn't include them in thier faunal list)...WE AGREE. Neither of us believe in Late Triasic North American prosauropods. The difference is one of temperment and wording. Would we really need two different words to describe our positions?
I guess the other difference is the definition of 'evidence'. You've set aside that the gnome believer's experience/belief is a form of evidence which an agnostic might accept.
In terms of evidence you or I might accept it really doesn't qualify, but to those with less rigour, who might 'take someone at their word' it opens up space for doubt.
Believers are welcome to approach faith in whatever way they want, but scientists do not accept "belief/experience" as anything except delusion if it is not supported by outside evidence. The scientific method is structured around belief being inherently unreliable without evidence.
"Experience" can also be discounted. Human emotion and sensations can be demonstrated to be tied to changes in brain activity and chemistry, and the most reasonable interpretation of religious experience is therefore that it is due to the same. Believers may claim that there is some outside influence affecting brain activity, but this is an ad hoc explanation; they presuppose outside influence, and interpret eveything accordingly. Science CAN comment on religious experience.
If the term "agnostic" encompasses people who think that there IS some evidence for God (just really weak evidence that doesn't quite settle the issue), than I might consider atheist and a subset of agnosticism as separate beleifs (although this is not my understanding of what most agnostics think).
To give an analogy using my prosauropod example, if some paleontologists interpret some Late Triasic trackways in North America as having POSSIBLY been made by prosauropods, whereas other workers don't even accept those (and think they were clearly made by pseudosuchians), there there IS a difference between a Late Triassic western North America prosauropod "atheist", and such a Late Triassic western North America prosauropod "agnostic."
I guess a substantial part of this is rigor and the 'null hypothesis'. Most people lack the time or inclination to apply skepticism and the resulting research.
You and I may discount 'experience' as evidence for the reasons you listed, but many people will accept the word of others and place much stock in 'proportional experience'- ie. that many people are convinced by a certain belief, as evidence.
Agnostic and atheist don't "really" have this sort of "degree of plausibility" distinction. Or at least semantically and historically the term has nothing to do with that, even though it has been often used as a sort of "open minded" position that accepts that it could be either way.
Semantically/historically agnosticism is a label that asserts that it's unknowable whether something (often "God", as in a YHVH-like kind of superman or incorporeal super-mind) exists or not. That it's not a scientific hypothesis you can test, as the nature (or "supernature") of the thing allows to an infinite amount of ad hoc counter explanations to the absence of the evidence that one would find reasonable to expect.
I guess most atheists are agnostics, I have only seen Dawkins actually saying something along the lines that "God" is a scientific hypothesis that can be refuted. I don't totally disagree with the reasoning, but I think that calling this sort of thing a scientific hypothesis is almost an insult, and probably not quite the case in technical/philosophical grounds that don't even give theology any unwarranted credit. I'd prefer to say that's not really more a scientific question than faeries, and likewise it does not even worth bothering about.
Most agnostics are also atheists (even though not rarely those who prefer this label use it to express that they think "God" has a degree of plausibility that one don't usually consider to faeries these days), but they can also be theists, or, more likely, deists. They just believe, at the same time they admit it's ultimately unknowable, rather than supposing that revelation is actually a hard proof.
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