Depths of Philosophy

Agnosticism, II; The Fall from Faith-based Agnosticism

By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 13, 14 Sharaf, 164 BE

"A little philosophy inclines the mind to atheism, but the depths of philosophy lead it back to faith."

Agnosticism is a heady wine. You start drinking it in and you get confused and cannot stop guzzling. The more you do not learn, the less you know. You ask, "Do I know, or not? Is there a God, or what?" The more you think the more you drink its wine and your toes seem to wiggle over the brink of a bottomless precipice, a black hole, an agnostic binge with no return. Douglas R. Hofstadter described the feeling when he wrote in "Godel, Escher, Bach,"

"If I were meta-agnostic, I would be confused over whether I am agnostic or not -- but I'm not quite sure if I feel that way; hence I must be meta-meta-agnostic (I guess)."

How many meta's should go before my brand of agnosticism? Actually, there is a term for the total, universal ignorance I feel when I try to define agnosticism, and that is "agnosy." Whatever you do, do not confuse agnosy with agnosticism. If you do, well, I do not know what would happen.

At one point I started to wonder how agnostics know one another. Do they doubt the existence of one another too? If not, how active are agnostics? Do they doubt their ability to work together? I did a search for agnostic-inspired groups and came across the "Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic," whose motto is (I am not making this up), "We don't know and we don't care." Well, they proved one thing to me, agnostics are not entirely devoid of a sense of humor.

Their site includes a yearly schedule of "holy" days, including, instead of Christmas, the "Twelve Days of Agnostimas," which starts with the Apathetic Agnostic Resurrection, i.e., the end of a period when their website had gone down and then came online again, and whose highlight comes on Agnostimas Eve on the 24th of December, and of course the big day,

"Agnostimas - a good day to exchange gifts with friends and relatives in a spirit of generousness, with no need to care about any religious overtones. But we won't object if any traditionalists prefer to devote the day to its original purpose - the worship of Mithras." <http://apatheticagnostic.org/ourchurch/calendar.html>

I can only remain agnostic about this group. Are they mocking themselves as well as religion?

The more I read about agnosticism the less I understand. Really, is it a frank admission of ignorance, an inherent part of the learning process where the student admits he needs a teacher, or is it an arrogant, lazy cop out, the student saying to the teacher, forget about it, I just do not know, never will and I doubt you know any better either. Maybe it is both. Take this, one of the most famous credo's stated publicly by an agnostic,

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means." (Clarence Darrow 1857-1938: speech at trial of John Thomas Scopes, 15 July 1925, quoted in OED)

By that logic, agnostics are imbued with the best of both worlds, the awed humility of the mystic and the detached objectivity of the creative scientist. They are open-minded seekers after truth and religious people talk drivel. God's permanent separation and distance from our understanding makes Him an irrelevancy, and in that case the Korean Proverb says it all, "A tree you cannot climb, you need not bother to look up at." And ultimately, in the face of what may or may not happen after death, even the evangelizing atheist must admit to agnosticism. Take the famous anecdote of an exchange that took place at Bertrand Russell's ninetieth birthday celebration.

"A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. "What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you're wrong?" she asked. "I mean, what if -- uh -- when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say?" Russell was delighted with the question. His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, "Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'" (in Al Seckel's Preface to "Bertrand Russell on God and Religion")

Insufficient evidence? This is a serious accusation. An unknowable Being should at the very least let us know that he exists. A faith-based agnostic might well point out that agnosticism is bound up in the very definition of the word "God." As soon as you learn the word "God" you learn all you need to know, or will ever know, about the Unknowable. God is an infinite Being that cannot be understood by any but Himself. As soon as you take in that definition you realize that all are agnostics, whether they want to not, whether they declare it or not. This was pointed out by Mortimer Adler, author of the book "How to think about God,"

 "Then there is the position of the agnostic who says that from the very nature of God as conceived, in the manner in which I've suggested He be conceived, we cannot possibly know whether God does exist or not. But the very nature of God being transcendent, infinite, beyond our range of apprehension is such a being that even as we conceive it we could tell that we couldn't know whether it's a being that exists or not." (The Great Idea of God, Mortimer J. Adler, http://radicalacademy.com/adlerongod.htm)

There is ample scriptural backing for this idea that agnosticism is universal. For example, the Bible, "Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known." (Ps 77:19) And the Qu'ran, "They put questions to you about the Spirit. Say: `The Spirit is at my Lord's command. Little indeed is the knowledge vouchsafed to you.'" (Qur'an 17:84) But this leads us into a further dilemma: if those who have faith are agnostic, openly ignorant of the Unknowable Being, what is the difference between them and professed agnostics?

Does this force us to add one more "meta" prefix to the word "agnostic" than Douglas Hofstadter did to derive the same chain of meanings of doubt? Such seems to be the case, considering this definition, which shows how the agnostic singles out not God but our knowledge of God as the object of doubt.

"(Agnosticism is) the belief that human beings do not have sufficient evidence to warrant either the affirmation or the denial of a proposition. The term is used especially in reference to our lack of knowledge of the existence of god. In this, the agnostic, who holds that we cannot know whether or not god exists, differs from the atheist, who denies that god exists." (A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/)

I suspect that some atheists take on the guise of agnostic when it is convenient, as was certainly the case of the inventor of the word, Thomas Huxley, Darwin's Bulldog, who wrote,

"Some twenty years ago, or thereabouts, I invented the word Agnostic to denote people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with utmost confidence. Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. . . Consequently Agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology."

This supposed reticence about talking about what we cannot know did not stop Huxley from writing book after book designed to extend scientific theory well beyond the worldly discoveries that it has anything certain to say about. Even today an entire industry churns out books and theories on both sides, scientists trying to appropriate theology and theologians trying to appropriate scientific theory.

I suspect that Huxley came up with the word "agnostic" only after he noticed that the new theory of evolution was not provoking the mass exodus from belief in God that he, an atheist, had hoped for. In other words, agnosticism is a recruitment technique devised by strong atheists to woo weak atheists and wavering believers. As the Universal Church Triumphant's title "apathetic" implies, most atheists and agnostics really are sunk in apathy and hardly care enough even to come up with a name for their lack of belief.

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not." (Eric Hoffer)

 So, if agnostic is already implied in the word "God," and if agnosticism does not doubt the Unknowable but rather our ability to know the Unknowable, again, what are agnostics doing that believers are not already? Here is an instance of the bats in Aesop's tale. In his fable of a battle between the birds and the beasts, the bats, mammals that fly, took one side, then the other, and finally tried to take neutral ground. This ended in their banishment from the day into the darkness of night. As the Spirit warns in the Book of Revelation,

"The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Head of God's creation, says these things: `I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.' (3:14-16, WEB)