A Defense of Agnosticism

I know this is strange for an inaugural post but, whatever. I tried to use this blog as a secret public diary but some things were written in it that could have offended some people I consider friends, so I deleted the first few posts with an eye towards starting fresh. I was going to do my usual statement of intent but I figured what better way to express my intentions with this blog than just spouting off about some bullshit that is near and dear to me?

A friend of mine recently posted a list of questions aimed towards religious people. He got a couple of good responses. One of which was all about how agnosticism is intellectually dishonest because it doesn't take the stance that nothing is knowable.The example cited was how 2+2=4 is grounded in subjective experience and how can we ever know anything outside ourselves is real and blah blah blah.

I have written four drafts of this and chucked them all. Not out of fear of being offensive but because I get too worked up and I drift away from my main point. So, I will try this again...my friend's respondent attacked agnosticism on a purely abstract plane of thought. He stated that basic math was as circular as believing in Jesus. This offended me on a couple of levels.

Firstly, religion is powerful because it cannot be undermined by fact. Tons of evidence has been unearthed that things didn't happen the way the Bible says but these new facts have not caused believers to sway in their beliefs. I am offended when defenders of religion feel the need to try and "prove" their positions using logic and/or science, both of which are against them. If one stays in the realm of the philosophical, all ideas are possible and all beliefs have weight. If you get cornered, just fall back to "how do we know what is known since all experience is subjective...what is reality, man?" That old philosophy 101 chestnut. That is the great equalizer. When you feel like you have to prove the existence of God using Intelligent Design or by calling agnosticism "circular logic" I think you do a disservice to your beliefs. In other words, recognize your strength comes from faith rather than fact and stick with that.

Secondly, once one moves out of the lofty realms of philosophy and ideas things need to actually get done in the real world. Medicines need to be developed. Advances in transportation, clothing, hygiene and a million other areas of human endeavor would never make it past the drawing board if every idea got bogged down in "how do I know the red you see is the same red I see?" Things really started moving for us, as a species, when we embraced the scientific method. 2+2=4 is not a case a circular logic (I know because I know), it is demonstrable, replicable and observable. Even moving away from numbers on paper, you can take two rocks, bring in two more rocks and always have four rocks. That never changes. The scientific method already gives an edge to religion because no one can prove God doesn't exist. You can't prove a negative. So, the burden falls to the faithful. If they wish to dirty themselves in arguing that their religion is a Truth that can be supported through facts, they must provide the proof. Tearing down the truths established independent of religion (like math and science) is not the same as raising religion to that level of proof.

The respondent over-simplified the idea of math, placing it on par with religious belief. Agnosticism is not the idea that nothing is knowable, it is the idea that there is a way to know things (even if all reality is subjective) that we each agree to. It means my level of proof is just higher than that of a believer. We both believe in gravity, because neither of us have shot off the face of the Earth but he also believes that an active deity is hearing his prayers at night and acts accordingly.

I would love it to find out an afterlife exists and God is a sentient creature of some sort watching over everyone. Nothing I have experienced in my life tells me that this is true. It doesn't feel right and it doesn't make sense to me. Have I felt connected to something greater than myself? Yes, indeed I have. I had no inkling that this larger force had agency in my day to day life. I have just felt connected to the world and other living things. I would say, if I had never had such feelings, I would be a flat-out atheist. However, I do believe there is more to the world than we know and the unknown might as well be called God. Maybe one day, science will illuminate all corners of human experience and my Oceanic feelings (as Freud called them) will be explained away as some pheromone-activated portion of the brain that makes one feel responsible as part of the world. And then the odds of a God existing will die a little more. Until then, I work with what I have...which is all any of us can do.

Before I leave, I wanted to speak about a famous idea called the Gambler's Dilemma. It was once used as an argument for faith. Essentially, a monk and a gambler are talking about why the gambler doesn't believe in God. The monk decides to put it to him in a way he will understand. The monk says, "Say you live your life as sinfully as possible and, when you die, it turns out you are right and there is no God? You've lost nothing. Now, say you live your life sinfully and you are wrong. You will have an eternity of suffering compared to your brief lifespan of pleasure." Scary, right? Makes you think, shit, just to be on the safe side, I should believe in God. However, there is an aspect that is thoroughly neglected in this. If I had been the gambler I would have responded, "Well, say you live your life totally pious and when you die, you find out you are right. You get an eternity of reward, right? Now, say you live a pious life, denying your needs and desires and then you find out when you die you were wrong? Didn't you just waste the one, brief period you existed sublimating yourself for a reward that isn't coming?"

I know we have this life. No one knows what happens after you die. Don't be good to others because you think it will get you into heaven, just be good to other people because it is the right thing to do. That's just my two cents. Sorry about the rant.

I promise it won't always be rants. Watch this space.