I recently came across these comments in the notes section of an entry Popper posted on 01/27/04:

“. . . ‘AUUB argues that only in the God question are the skeptics forced to provide proof of their assertion. Yet this ignores the common rule of debate; that whoever makes an assertion, either positive or negative, must back it up with some form of proof’ . . . [Popper]

“I don't know about being ‘forced’, but he is right in a way. I've told people I don't believe in aliens, ghosts, etc ...and I've never been questioned. The minute I say I'm an atheist, I'm asked to explain why.” rexie (01/27/2004 1:15:31-1:19:22 PM)

I have repeatedly encountered the same sort of thing rexie is talking about. I suspect most if not all American atheists have. It’s as if belief in any sort of gOd - no matter how strange or absurd that gOd may be - is deemed more acceptable than belief in no gOd at all. This may make social or psychological sense, but it’s extremely difficult for me to see how it makes any kind of objective, logical, scientific sense. People seem to be evaluating the gOd concept using far looser and stranger standards than they use when they evaluate most other concepts. It’s almost as if there’s something about gOd that turns even very bright people into children clutching their security blankets, if not into blathering idiots.

These loose, strange standards are perhaps most obvious when we atheists deal with fanatical theists, but some form of them seems to lurk within even the most reasonable of agnostics.

I’ve discussed agnosticism before, of course - perhaps most notably in entries I posted on 7/17/2000 and 8/12/03. The prevalent yet rarely acknowledged double-standard alluded to by rexie has prompted me to revisit the subject, as has the last chapter in Paul Edwards’s book Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. It seems to me that this double-standard is merely one of the many things I find objectionable about theists while it is perhaps the main thing I find objectionable about agnostics.

First, a note about terminology. According to Philosophy Professor Robert Todd Carroll’s The Skeptic’s Dictionary (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2003), agnosticism is the belief “that it is impossible to know whether God exists. It is often put forth as a middleground between theism and atheism... The agnostic holds that human knowledge is limited to the natural world, that the mind is incapable of knowledge of the supernatural. Understood this way, an agnostic could be either a theist or an atheist.” Or as George H. Smith explains in his Atheism: The Case Against God, “Properly considered, agnosticism is not a third alternative to theism and atheism because it is concerned with a different aspect of religious belief. Theism and atheism refer to the presence or absence of belief in god; agnosticism refers to impossibility of knowledge with regard to god....” (pp. 9-10). The agnostic theist says “There is no evidence that a deity exists, but I choose to believe (or have faith in) a deity’s existence anyway.” The agnostic atheist says “There is no evidence that a deity exists, therefore I do not have sufficient grounds for believing a deity exists, so I don’t - but one might exist anyway.”

I say “The concept of deity doesn’t make sense - it’s vague, ambiguous, empty, and/or self-contradictory. There’s no evidence that deity exists, and there’s no good reason to believe we’re ever going to discover such evidence. When this is the case with regard to virtually any other thing, we quite naturally feel free to say that that thing does not exist. Why should we treat deity any differently? If it’s neither right nor appropriate to conclude deity does not exist, what can we rightly and appropriately declare to be non-existent?”

I realize that this may sound absolute and closed-minded to some. In a very real sense, it is absolute and closed-minded. So what? Calling something absolute and closed-minded is only a valid criticism if one assumes that it’s never right to be absolute or closed-minded. In other words, it’s only a valid criticism if one assumes that there are no absolutes or that one must be open-minded about everything. But assuming this itself seems to be an absolute, closed-minded position - which would seem to entangle one in a fatal self-contradiction. The question becomes: What may we safely be absolute and closed-minded about? To which I reply: Concepts and entities as poorly defined, conceptually absurd, and empirically unproven as gOd.

Many theists, of course, would reply differently. I believe I’ve shown in other entries why they’re wrong to give the replies they do. What I want to address now is how those who call themselves agnostics have replied, and then explain why they, too, are wrong.

Despite what Carroll and Smith say, most of the agnostics I’ve encountered seem to think of agnosticism as a thing quite separate from theism or atheism - a genuine third choice - an oh-so-reasonable “I don’t know.” These agnostics seem to me to be unfortunate victims of social pressures and cultural conditioning at best, and perhaps to be fearful, self-deceived, pseudo-theists at worst. Why? Because they take the gOd concept far more seriously (and evaluate it far more generously) than they do other, similarly flawed concepts. In fact, agnostics seem to give the absurd gOd concept far more serious thought and respect than they give many things that are demonstrably real possibilities. This makes little logical sense and would appear to indicate that the roots of theological agnosticism are to be found not in logic but in something else entirely (such as emotional need or social brainwashing).

I’ll now attempt to put some flesh on these bare-bone charges.

Do agnostics take the absurd gOd concept more seriously and give it more respect than they do other absurd concepts? As noteleaver rexie indicated, I believe the answer is yes. Although I’ve encountered many agnostics who reply “I don’t know” when asked if gOd exists, few, if any, are quite as noncommittal or uncertain when it comes to aliens, ghosts, vampires, elves, pixies, brownies, goblins, trolls, fairies, sprites, imps, mermaids, unicorns, centaurs, dragons, leprechauns, griffins, gremlins, flying monkeys, flying reindeer, Santa, Jack Frost, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, the Boogeyman, or any of the other beings that the vast majority of people seem to easily dismiss out of hand. Why? What reasonable premise allows most if not all of these beings to be ruled out of bounds but allows for gOd to be taken more seriously?

(To be continued...)