Agnosticism and Atheism are not Mutually Exclusive July 30, 2008
Posted by atheismandhappiness in Agnosticism, Atheism.Tags: Agnostic, Argument, Atheist, Belief, Logic
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Recently I have read several blogs criticizing Atheists based on a common logical argument. I’ve literally been reading this (though worded differently) everywhere:
Draw a circle on a piece of paper, placing a single dot in the center that represents you. Everything you can possibly understand is illustrated by the circle. How can you claim to know about what is outside of the circle? In other words, how can Atheists know that there isn’t a god without being all-knowing themselves?
A lot of bloggers cite this as the reason that they are “agnostic rather than atheistic.” This results from a misunderstanding of the terms.
Agnostic (Greek: α- a-, without + γνώσις gnōsis, knowledge) is a statement of knowledge. If you claim to be agnostic, you claim to be unable to prove whether or not a god or gods exist. You can be an agnostic theist, one who believes in a god but cannot prove its existence, or you can be an agnostic atheist, one who cannot prove or disprove gods, but does not believe in them.
In the same way that being agnostic is a statement of knowledge, atheism is a statement of belief. In answer to the question above, the atheist does not believe that there is circle at all, or rather that the circle emcompasses all that exists. While the theist would ask, “How can you prove that what is outside the circle doesn’t exist?” The Atheist would ask, “How can you prove that it does?”
Because God is supposed to be in the circle. I mean think about it- God claims he is in it, but he obviously isn’t, so…
That wouldn’t make him supernatural though. If we could fully understand god he would be able to be defined by natural means. He could be defined and would have limits. He would be natural. If he was natural, and we still havn’t found him, what does that say about how influential he is? Would he be able to survive indefinately due to natural constraints? And would you still call him god?
It makes for a very interesting line of thought which I came very close to putting in this post but decided to leave out for length reasons. Using this train of thought you could call matter, collectively, god. Or you could call the first cell from whence every other cell came “god.” (Every cell is replicated from a previous cell) There are those that worship cows and those that worship a teapot. It just limits what you believe your god can do, what you will do for it, and even redefines the word itself.
I sometimes hear the arguments that erupt between those Certain Kind of Agnostics (the ones with the Militant Agnostic bumperstickers
and those Certain Kind of Atheists (the ones that go on and on about “strong” atheism and “weak” atheism and how “strong” atheism is better) and it ends up looking like people pissing in the wind. So, yes, completely what you say. They deal in slightly different areas. The terms are answers to different questions.
My argument defines the circle as what you currently know, not everything you could possibly know. That may make a difference.