| Agnosticism—as a general approach to knowledge—refuses to reject arbitrary propositions. This is the general position behind the agnostic approach to the question of God's existence. Agnosticism holds that claims should be evaluated on the basis of evidence, and that claims should not be rejected unless there is sufficient evidence against them (in other words, a claim should not be rejected outright even if no evidence exists either to support or refute it). |
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There may be agnostics who fit this description, but it is not necessarily what Huxley meant when he coined the term, and it is not an accurate description of agnostics who reject belief but make no knowledge claim. Damian Moskovitz, like Leonard Peikoff, is not distinguishing knowledge from belief and weak atheism from strong atheism. He is constructing a straw man definition of agnostic and not dealing with an agnostic who can flatly reject arbitrary propositions and demand that knowledge claims be supported with reasoning and evidence, which they should.
| The primary problem for the agnostic is that he allows arbitrary claims to enter his cognitive context. The fully rational man, on the other hand, does not seek evidence to prove or disprove arbitrary claims, for he has no reason to believe that such claims are true in the first place. |
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An agnostic can reject belief but make no knowledge claim, and that’s a perfectly rational position to take.
| Agnostics will often respond to those who reject an arbitrary proposition by saying, "How do you know it isn't true?" The proper response is to point out that the burden of proof rests on he who asserts a proposition. No value is achieved by going around refuting arbitrary claims—it is a waste of time and effort. |
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Saying that one “knows” something isn’t true is not the same as saying one “believes” it isn’t true. If someone makes a knowledge claim, he or she has a burden to prove it, support it with reasoning and evidence. This goes for knowledge claims for or against something. It is not the case that something exists simply because someone cannot prove it doesn’t, and it is not the case that it doesn’t exist simply because someone cannot prove it does. However, if someone merely rejects belief in a proposition but makes no knowledge claim, he or she has no burden.
| And not only does it tend to be useless to refute arbitrary propositions; it is often impossible to do so. Since he who advances an arbitrary proposition sees no need to support his claims with evidence, he can invoke as many additional arbitrary propositions as he needs to ensure that you cannot disprove his original claim. To illustrate, imagine that I told you that there is a gremlin in your room. If you were to search the entire room and not find it, I could explain this away by saying that the gremlin ran so fast from place to place that you could neither see it nor catch up with it. I could construct my story such that there could not be evidence that the gremlin either exists or does not exist. |
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If someone makes a knowledge claim that there is a gremlin in my room, it would be his or her burden to prove it, not mine to disprove it.
| The agnostic position on the existence of God rests on this general commitment to agnosticism. Agnosticism holds that the God's existence has been neither proved nor disproved, or that it can be neither proved nor disproved. And it is true that the existence of God, as conventionally conceived, can be neither proved nor disproved, for two reasons. First, theists often adjust their stories about God ad hoc (as I adjusted my story about the gremlin) in order to ensure that no observations could contradict his existence, rendering the proposition that God exists untestable. Second, theists often characterize God in an incoherent manner, as, for example, a being of infinite dimensions who is not physical and exists in a supernatural realm—i.e., as a being that exists without any real characteristics or outside of reality. In other words, theism tends to be either meaningless (because it is untestable) or self-contradictory. |
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If it is meaningless, then it is not proven. One can reject the belief in the proposition. If t is self-contradictory, then it is disproved. One can claim as knowledge that contradictory concepts, like square-circles, cannot exist in realty. One can be an agnostic or weak atheist in the first case and a strong atheist in the second. It depends on how God is defined.
| But even if the notion of God were formulated in a testable, coherent manner, the claim that God exists would be no less arbitrary and would be equally unworthy of evaluation. The proposition was formed not on the basis of evidence (i.e., perceptual data integrated by logic)—it could have been formed only on the basis of imagination. And if one chooses what to believe on the basis of imagination rather than logic, then one sacrifices the possibility of knowledge. Theists claim that God exists, but what do they cite as evidence in favor of their claim? Many point to no evidence at all, saying instead that we should accept his existence on faith. However, the doctrine of faith says not that we should evaluate arbitrary premises; rather, it says that we should accept arbitrary premises without evaluation. But knowledge must be grounded in facts—believing that something is true doesn't make it true. |
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Yes, the agnostic could agree that believing something is true does not make it true. Knowledge is not the same as belief or faith. If the theist only used faith to try to prove that god exists, he or she has not succeeded. It doesn’t mean, however, that there has been proof God does not exist. If someone makes a knowledge claim that God does not exist, he or she should do more than say, “Well, you can’t prove that He does, so that means He doesn’t.” No, it means you can’t prove He does. That’s all.
| One may wonder why agnosticism is so popular if it is so non-objective. Some agnostics may be honestly mistaken in their belief that arbitrary claims should not be rejected. Others may wish, at some level, to evade the fact that there is no reason to believe that they are loved and protected by an all-powerful being or that they will experience eternal bliss after death. While this belief may give them a sense of security, it is a false sense of security. And by refusing to think objectively, to accept reality as it is, the agnostics thereby undermine their ability to take responsibility for their lives and to deal with the world as effectively as possible. For Objectivists, on the other hand, atheism is not a negation, but rather an affirmation of reality, of reason's ability to know it, and of man's ability to create meaning for himself. |
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Yes, some agnostics may be this way, and some may be that way. However, some agnostics merely reject beliefs but make no knowledge claims in some situations. They don’t deserve to be lumped into one box and characterized as cowards for doing so. Objectivists need to rethink this issue.
bis bald,
Nick
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