What is an agnostic?

Last updated on: September 29, 2015 at 1:44 pm by Richard Ostling

What is an agnostic? 2015-09-29T13:44:08-04:00 Richard Ostling

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LISA’S QUESTION:

What does it mean to be agnostic? Are there people who actually consider it to be a religion?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

In Pew Research’s much-mulled 2014 religion poll of 35,000 U.S. adults, 3.1 percent defined themselves as “atheists” (compared with 1.6 percent in a similar 2007 survey) while a somewhat larger faction of 4 percent called themselves “agnostics” (versus 2.4 percent in 2007). Pew grabbed headlines by combining them with the far larger numbers who said their faith was “nothing in particular” and concluding that 22.8 percent of Americans are now religiously “unaffiliated” compared with only 16.1 percent seven years earlier.

The agnostic term was coined in 1869 by biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, a noted advocate of Darwin’s evolution theory, to distinguish his own doubts from outright atheism. Darwin soon embraced that label for himself. So did a popular U.S. performer of that era, the touring anti-religion lecturer Robert Ingersoll. However, the agnostic outlook was nothing new. This sort of skepticism was found among some thinkers in ancient Greece and India as far back as the centuries B.C.

No doubt (so to speak) the line between agnosticism and atheism can be confusing, but it was well and clearly defined by the great British mathematician Bertrand Russell, a critic of Christianity, in his essay “What Is An Agnostic?”:

“An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time. Are agnostics atheists? No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.”

Note the first two sentences. Other writers on this distinguish between “strong” (or “hard” or “closed” or “strict”) agnosticism and “weak” (or “soft” or “open”) agnosticism. The first camp asserts flatly that human reason is incapable of verifying God or the supernatural so no-one is ever capable of knowing the truth. The second “weak” form contends that we are currently unable to know about such things but they aren’t necessarily unknowable in principle so it’s wise to avoid absolute claims.

Austin Cline, an Internet designer and prolific online writer about all things agnostic and atheistic, summarizes: “A weak agnostic says ‘I don’t know if any gods exist or not.’ A strong agnostic says ‘no one can possibly know if any gods exist or not’.” He insists that agnosticism is not superior to atheism on grounds it’s more sensible or less dogmatic about the ineffable.

To the other of Lisa’s interests, Cline vigorously denies that agnosticism constitutes a religion, just as atheists usually claim the same. It certainly lacks the organizations and rituals associated with the word. However, others say agnosticism obviously holds a particular affirmation (or negation) and is at least religious to that extent. To Cline, an individual agnostic may be religious in some sense. Or not.

Further, Cline denies that agnosticism is some kind of “third way” between atheism and theism. “Agnosticism is not about belief in god but about knowledge,” which is a separate issue altogether. Therefore, agnosticism can be compatible with atheism and theism alike. “You can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist,” he contends.

Say what? The “agnostic theist” believes in God or a god without claiming to know for sure. The “agnostic atheist” doesn’t personally believe but does not claim to know for sure that no God or gods exist. Such persons “won’t claim to know for sure that nothing warranting the label ‘god’ exists, or that such cannot exist, but they also don’t believe that such an entity does indeed exist.” Got that?

Moreover, he says an individual can well be both an atheist and an agnostic simultaneously. If all that is confusing, consider Britain’s Methodist-trained Congregationalist pastor Leslie Weatherhead. His idiosyncratic form of liberal theology included a 1965 work explaining “The Christian Agnostic.”

What do those who find good reasons for belief in God make of all this? Patheos.com is a top source for essays from pretty much every imaginable faith viewpoint. One contributor, fundamentalist-turned-Anglican-turned-Catholic Dwight Longenecker, sees three types of agnosticism. The “healthy” type is open-minded,” “cheerfully ignorant,” and unable to honestly decide. The second type is “simply lazy” and finds it easier because belief might involve obedience and “homework.” The third type is a rebel. Longenecker thinks all three are “transitional states” that eventually “drift into a state of belief or denial,” usually the latter.

Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov of the Kabbalah Korner blog says half the students he meets claim to be agnostic, but he argues that “there are no agnostics.” By that he means “hiding behind the neutrality of agnosticism works in theory, but in practice there are only two options, believer or denier.” Either there is a God or there is not. “Just as whether or not you are aware of gravity, the effects of smoking, or the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 does not change those realities and their effects, whether or not you are aware of any reality does not change that reality and its effects. Any realist knows this.”

Added detail: “Agnostic” has nothing to do with the secretive mystical knowledge sects in ancient times generally called “Gnostic,” which early Christianity banished as heretical. That’s important because some scholars who are aliented from Christian orthodoxy have popularized Gnosticism in modern times.

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