Agnostic or Atheist?

I want to consider theistic agnosticism, which, loosely defined, is the position of being uncertain on whether there is a God.

I am seeing a lot of claims these days to the effect that one should get off the fence and be either a believing theist, or an atheist. This has probably been stimulated in part by the New Atheist movement. Personally, I have a great deal of sympathy with this movement, and I am an avid reader of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, these four likely being its most prominent and most articulate spokesmen.

I happened upon a certain website recently that seems to represent the typical "ixnay to the agnosticyay" view, and I would like to briefly analyze what I think is wrong with it, and why I continue to think of myself as an agnostic.

Now, Dawkins frequently makes the valid observation, in debates with theists (usually Christians), that most everyone today is an atheist with respect to Zeus or other gods of the ancient world. In other words, one must specify the gods one does or does not believe in. I agree with him on this. Indeed, I would be an atheist regarding not only Zeus, but also Allah, the old testament depiction of Jehovah, the Hindu pantheon of gods, and surely a great many other gods from the past and present that I have never even heard of.

However, there are two types of theism that I am uncertain about, and there could well be some degree of overlap between these two: one is the Christian God, as depicted in the writings of people like John Polkinghorne, C. S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton. These make a good case, and go a long way toward giving plausible "apologetic" arguments for Christianity. I remain unconvinced, but can see their points, and think them worthy of serious consideration. No doubt these views represent relatively "liberal" theological positions, and I might well consider myself an atheist with respect to the God depicted by more Bible-literal sects, such as evangelical and other conservative clergy and religious writers. I come close to being an atheist even with regard to the deity put forth by the Polkinghorne et al writers mentioned above, but would deem their arguments sufficiently weighty and plausible that I suppose I stop short of being virtually certain they are wrong. Perhaps I am not looking in the right places, but I have yet to come across arguments anywhere near as convincing for the gods of Islam and Hinduism.

The other type of theism I consider plausible might blur a bit with Deism.....the argument that the universe seems a mighty big coincidence, never mind the question of why there is a universe anyway. Of course the literature is teeming with claims about how the "multiverse" is an alternative, and better, explanation of the apparent fine tuning of the world (I will not go into this here, but just give the Wikipedia reference). While the multiverse idea seems plausible, and could be right, I have a nagging suspicion that a deistic or theistic explanation might be as least as plausible.

One may discern two seemingly different forms of agnosticism. In one type, one says simply that he or she does not know if there is a God. In a second type, a stronger claim is made, that one cannot know whether there is a God or not. The first type leaves open the possibility that one might later make a more definite move into theism or atheism based on evidence or metaphysical insights.

Consider the analogy of a police detective: a certain person is a suspect in a murder. Some are convinced that the person is very likely the guilty culprit, while others are convinced that he is not. In neither case are these people absolutely certain, say, it is just that they are strongly inclined toward their belief. But the police detective is not sure either way. He can, let us say, imagine that the suspect committed the crime, but at the same time see that there are things that do not quite seem to add up to the suspect's guilt.

Let us say that the people reasonably sure of his guilt are in the position of the theist, while the ones fairly certain of his innocence are the atheists (the labels can be reversed here). But the police detective is truly agnostic on the issue. He can imagine plausible arguments either way. He may even be of the second kind of agnostic, and feel that it will be impossible to make the determination of his guilt or innocence. Or, he may be of the first type, and feel that further investigation into the case will tip the scales one way or the other.

The web site referenced above seems to dwell a lot on whether atheism or agnosticism is the more socially well-regarded position. I reject that consideration as being irrelevant. I simply point out that agnosticism with regard to some given theistic position is reasonable, being as it is analogous to the position of the police detective.

Concerning putting "In God We Trust" on Coins

A friend sent me one of those “pass this on to everyone you know” emails today. I don’t think I have ever actually passed such an email on, and I certainly did not this one, mainly because I couldn’t disagree with it more.

The post---which turns out to be wrong--- said that there is a new US dollar coin out that does not have “In God we Trust” on the coin (I shall assume that I am not being naïve, and falling for some kind of gag….at first I thought it was something like that). The post went on to urge everyone to boycott the coin, that is, to refuse to accept it for monetary exchanges.

The fact is that the coin does contain the “In God We Trust” inscription on the edge of coin. I think this is unfortunate. It would be better if it were entirely absent.

I claim that whether you are Christian, Deist, Atheist, etc, you should in fact insist that all references to any Deity be absent from all government issues. Now, maybe there are other reasons for resisting the circulation of a new coin---though I cannot imagine what they might be---but one should not resist the circulation on religious grounds, regardless of his or her affiliation.

Here is the main reason why: we have, and should have, a secular government. Having such is in fact a requirement of a state that insures freedom of religion. It is unfortunately true that the “founding fathers” did put the term God into some of the founding documents, but a clear reading of the climate in which these things were created shows it to be a rather generalized term for a common ideal, not a theistically conceived God. In particular, there is, as far as I can tell, no mention of Christianity or Jesus in any of the state papers. The spirit of that age, which gave rise to a free society, and put an end to any justification of there being a “Divine Right of Kings”, was that of the Enlightenment. While many of the framers of the American documents claimed to be Deists, some were Christians, but I believe all felt that religious freedom was vital, and that adherence to a state recognized religion was very wrong.

What is a person thinking that says such things as “Now, especially in these dire times, we do not want to remove God from our coins!” Do they think that God will look favorably upon the citizens living under a government that puts His Name on government property? That He will favor a society that does this, and tend to bring misfortune on a country having a secular government? To me this is absurd, even from---or maybe I should say especially from---a Christian perspective. As I recall, there is a scene in the New Testament where Jesus asks whose image is on a coin, Caesar or God’s----the clear intent of it is that it is Caesar’s. He does not say that it should be God’s--- rather it is, I think, implied that a government is by its nature neutral from a religious perspective. Some Christians may disagree with my interpretation, but I hope they will at least think about mine. (Speaking for myself, I am an agnostic, not a Christian, but I believe I can see things from their perspective).

Do they think they are going to “fool God”, and He will think favorably of people who hypocritically put His name on coins and intone it in state-related oaths? And why pretend that we all have essentially the same concept of God? I am pretty sure that this is not the case, even among the various Christian denominations, even less so among the different religions represented within the United States.

There is the practical issue that it sets a very bad precedent. How will such precedents play in the future? Suppose “God” gets changed to “Allah”. Granted, Christianity is no doubt a majority religion at the present time, but this may not remain true in the more distant future. If you are Christian or Jewish, think how you would feel if the coins were minted with Allah on the face. Not happily, I am pretty sure. And in any case, it is central to the idea of religious freedom to protect the rights of those belonging to minority religions (or to no religion at all).

Everyone should rejoice that we have a government that makes no reference to any particular religion, even allowing for a more generalized concept of a Deity. Look around the world and observe how so many states have a dogma ingrained into their government. There are of course dogmatically infested states that are godless, but these seem to often involve the worship of an “Emperor” or such, and in effect are a sort of theocracy (think of North Korea). Theocracies abound, and the irony is that the US is at odds (even if not actually at war) with many of them. And quite often these theocratic governments are flagrant violators of human rights; I doubt that this is a simple coincidence.

As far as the government is concerned, let it be neutral about the existence of a Deity. This issue should be left to each individual’s conviction (and of course to the churches, denominations, or sects to which an individual freely chooses to belong), even if some decide that there is no such being
God, if He exists, will be able to tell who believes and who does not. Above all, He would not be fooled by a cheap and unjustifiable ploy of putting his name on coins, thus surely making hypocrites of a great many citizens.

Deism-Theism-Agnosticism-Atheism (Part 1)

There is much hub bub these days about the spate of books extolling atheism. Specifically, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I very much like these books, and can go along with them for the most part. But not entirely. I call myself an "agnostic", and though I think all of these books plausibly attack that position as weak and to some extent cowardly, I want to hold to that label. I think it is justified, and believe that I can defend it..
To believe that it is justified, one might ask if there is any reason at all to say that you don't know whether something exists when there are no clear reasons for thinking that it does exist. The "it" in this case is a God, a set of gods, or a Deity...some kind of being or beings that in some way brought about the Universe.
First consider the "Deist" position. This was I believe held by Thomas Jefferson and others during that era we call "The Enlightenment". The idea is that there was some agency, or God, that designed and created the universe---but after doing so, he backed off from it, set back, and did not interfere with it. In particular, such a position rejects the organized religions, and the Abrahamic religions, and usually argues that the Creative Being does not concern Itself/Himself/Herself/Themselves with the doings of humanity.
The theist position, by contrast, adds to the Deist creation idea with the postulate that the Creative Being does continue to interact with the world, in particular, with the goings on of the human race. The Abrahamic religions would be, of course, theistic religions. Examples of such interactions might be selected "miracles", the dictating of certain rules or codes of conduct (e.g., The Ten Commandments), the Incarnation of Christianity, and so forth.
While I can not say that I subscribe to either of these positions, Deism or Theism, I do not agree that there are absolutely no reasons for considering the beliefs to be plausible.
I want to give two examples. One is the evidence, admittedly weak, for Theism. The other is somewhat stronger, to my mind, arguing for Deism.
The Deistic argument first, and I will here be very brief, hoping to enlarge upon this in a later post. This is based on the observation that the universe not only exists---itself a bizarre and vertigo-producing fact---but also that physics seems to suggest that the fundamental laws and parameters of the universe seem to be fine tuned to allow life and consciousness to form. Furthermore, the prevailing theory that the whole thing started with what is called the "Big Bang" seems to suggest that something started it. I know, of course, that there are alternative theories here to Deism---the parallel universes and such. But common sense---dubious in this context, it must be admitted--- seems to that the whole thing was created and designed by someone or something. There is no element here for me of "faith" at all, rather it is just a sort of intuitive feeeling. And I honestly don't know if the modern "Design" argument is very convincing to others, as there is some subjective judgement here.
The other argument, the one for Theism, is I admit much weaker, and much more subjective. This is based on art and music that has been inspired by one particular theistic religion, namely Christianity. The music, in particular, seems to me to be inspired beyond human capability. I think especially of the music of Bach, Palestrina, Handel, and Victoria. There are of course many others, but Bach stands out above all the rest, in my estimation. As I have said, this is a weak argument, but nevertheless it has some weight with me.