Agnosticism and Atheism

This is a response to a few points raised by Stephen Woodford in his recent video discussing the term atheism and how it should be used. I have used timestamps to highlight the sections being covered.

Hi Stephen

You asked for thoughts on this video, and so I decided to write them out here rather than as YouTube comments where they could get lost in the mêlée. The video overall was great and gives a good summary of all the possible positions. I just had a couple of points I wanted to mention, though, which I thought needed highlighting. The first was to do with the position of agnosticism and where to go from there. The answer for me, which is hardly ever covered, related to taking the default position. The second issue was the relationship between strong and weak atheism. I look forward to seeing your views on this, and, so please feel free to use the comment section below, and I will include your response.

Agnosticism - 12 minutes

Many people, as you mention, can sometimes see the view agnostics take as problematic, for example, are people really agnostic about reincarnation or the Loch Ness Monster? Yes, I am to both, and it isn't a problem for me. Your quote from Isaac Asimov was spot on. Not everything we are agnostic about, will deserve equal attention. The question is, what are the consequences associated with this?

After we have listened to the proposition, heard and weighed up the evidence and made an assessment such that a belief might be formed, or not as the case may be, we then try to determine whether believing something is true or not holding the belief, affects our lives in any way. Clearly some will in significant ways and some will just pass from our consciousness as Big Foot does every time I hear the name mentioned. However, on occasion we may decide that the consequence of believing could have an important role to play in our lives and decide to pursue the issue further, i.e. we need to resolve our scepticism/agnosticism. In the meantime, though, what do we do? I suggest the answer to that is that we adopt (or should) the default position. What is that? Default is a term that has many uses and therefore attracts many definitions, but in this instance it may be usefully defined as:

The Default position is that taken before or when any claims are disregarded

So in the case of reincarnation, I live my life as if it doesn't exist, and I can comfortably continue to leave that question in the agnostic file until such time as some evidence comes along to change my mind. As you may imagine, this is also the position I take with respect to God. Many get confused by this and ask if in doing that, I am effectively a Strong Atheist (see below). The answer is of course No, we are both atheists who do not believe in a god albeit for different reasons and live our lives accordingly. To do otherwise would be manifestly irrational (see the blog entry on Pascal's Wager that I am never going to write for the reason given above).

Weak and strong atheism - 14 minutes & 18 minutes

You raised the question relating to strong and weak atheism, which, I must say, are qualifiers I am not over keen on. Seeing them as sub-categories of atheism generally, whilst correct in one sense, does not really provide an accurate picture of what is going on here. For example, we don't seem to need a sub-sub-category for atheists who believe that gods cannot exist. In effect, the number of subgroups would be infinite. I would suggest there is a better way of classifying the various types of atheists and that is by cause, in other words, why are we atheists. So the definition of atheist becomes:

An atheist is a person who does not hold the belief that a god or gods exist

This is all that is required. Note also that this definition only applies to persons, and so the old trope of rocks and trees being atheists is thankfully avoided. What differentiates atheists, at this point, is the reason they take this position. So I am an atheist because I have not seen any compelling arguments presented to me to generate a belief in God (this is why I am also an agnostic, i.e. the terms are nothing mutually exclusive). Others may not hold a belief in God because they have evidence/arguments that he does not exist. More still may not take this position because their mother told them to, and they trust their mothers implicitly, and so on.

So now the model is much simpler to understand however, to find out what this reason is, something novel needs to happen - you need to ask them. The common objection to this form is that this information is not conveyed in the word, but this is nonsensical. There are many words that operate in the same way, such as 'vehicle' for example. No information is provided as to what type of vehicle is being referred to, i.e. a car or lorry etc., because the meaning is adequate at the level it is being used. If the vehicle in use is a car, then you may go deeper still to ascertain what type of car it is. In fact, this is no different to the Theist position. Just telling me that they believe in God provides no details about which particular God they subscribe to, Allah, Yahweh, Christian etc. , what form their religion takes i.e. Catholic, Baptist, Church of England and so on, or why they hold that belief. In order to discover that information, should I so desire or if it is necessary to further the discussion, I will need to ask them.

Best John

August 2021