Why Atheism Instead of Agnosticism?

Normally, I don't care much about labels, but sometimes you have to put a stake in the ground. People make a big deal about atheism vs. just being agnostic, mostly on the supposition that atheism is rather hard and militant, absolutely certain that there are no gods, while being agnostic is technically more correct, since science can't absolutely disprove the existence of some god. While a lot of people do in fact fall into that reasoning, it is slightly flawed, at least in my case.

For starters, I'm not militant at all, and I never claim science disproves all gods. Freedom is a right and free inquiry a virtue. Even in a purely secular world, there is little more that is sacred than freedom of thought. Therefore, people are free to believe whatever they want. Much of the universe is counter-intuitive, so the freedom to believe in strange things is precisely what fuels science. At the same time, it's important to note that believing strange things are possible only provides the catalyst (fuel) for hypotheses... science doesn't accept anything until there is corroborating evidence. That's what differentiates the scientific method from hocus-pocus superstitious nonsense. Having said that, I feel that some who aggressively choose the agnostic label over the atheist label on technicality are simply hedging their bets, or at some level, would like to have their spirituality cake and eat it too even though they have severe doubts about established theism. I find no need whatsoever to be spiritual in my life, or cling to any supernatural vestiges, nor to I believe that spirituality is a necessary precursor for morality and ethics (if you need some angry sky king to threaten you with eternal damnation for you to do the right thing, you are not moral or ethical). For me, it's a simple enough matter to be profoundly meditative/inquisitive in a philosophical sense without needing some "force" or essence to provoke deep thought or induce peaceful contemplation. In fact, art is often an excellent conduit for this. One can (and should) do everything to promote humanity, egalitarianism, and justice, simply because they are the right thing to do, and objectively the best course for humanity. I do not believe the soul is a necessary component of existence, and therefore, any "spiritual" interaction with that non-existent soul is equally unnecessary.

Now, to get to that technicality part about absolutes... First, let's start with disbeliefs in invisible beings who refuse to provide clear evidence for themselves and rely completely on (even demand) absolute faith. Let's take your average Christian (or Jew, or Muslim, or take your pick of any monotheist). Our theistic friend here has a natural and profound disbelief in hundreds, if not thousands of other gods. There is nothing unnatural about his disbelief, and it doesn't take some sort of weird power to do it. I simply dismiss one more god than he does. The problem with invisible beings who refuse to provide clear evidence is that they are completely indistinguishable from shit we just make up (ala Dawkins' spaghetti monster). I could claim that there are tiny invisible trolls who live in all toilets, but never show themselves in any physical way. You wouldn't be "agnostic" about this, even though, technically speaking, science wouldn't be able to disprove it. You would tell me I'm full of shit and so are my trolls.

Next, I am, and always have been an engineer and scientist (despite my fundamental evangelical upbringing), even from my earliest memories as child. I was always inquisitive and experimental, wanting to know exactly what made everything around me tick. A-anything is the default position to hypotheses in science, until there is enough weight of evidence to support something. Tim Maudlin penned it much more eloquently than I could: "Atheism is the default position in any scientific inquiry, just as a-quarkism or a-neutrinoism was. That is, any entity has to earn its admission into a scientific account either via direct evidence for its existence or because it plays some fundamental explanatory role. Before the theoretical need for neutrinos was appreciated (to preserve the conservation of energy) and then later experimental detection was made, they were not part of the accepted physical account of the world. To say physicists in 1900 were 'agnostic' about neutrinos sounds wrong: they just did not believe there were such things." But wait, I hear some of you saying, there are such things as neutrinos! Yes, but hundreds of other particles were at some time proposed (it got so bad, that it prompted the term "particle zoo"), yet the vast majority have been discredited. It's not that science said neutrinos could never exist, simply that it needed evidence of neutrinos before neutrinos were accepted. Otherwise, it would be no different from all the other made up particles that ended up in the dust bin of disproven ideas. And I think that a lot of atheists today are exactly in the same boat. If (some) god appeared in plain form and created one tiny world (I'm not even asking for a universe!), I would immediately become a creationist. Until that happens, I'm not agnostic about it... I don't accept it any more than I accept tiny invisible toilet trolls.

My first drafts always seem to ramble a bit even though I typically start with what I believe at the time to be a concise set of points I want to make. In this case, I was trying to center my thoughts around the Tim Maudlin quote (and the rest of his article is fantastic and provides a lot of a good context, which sadly didn't make it into my humble journal post). But in order to avoid any ruffling of feathers of some of my very well-respected agnostic friends here, let me summarize the thoughts as follows:

• If someone uses the label "agnostic" to strictly mean allowing oneself to be grounded in "not having absolute knowledge", then...
• In scientific matters, the scientific method has agnosticism built-in. One does not have to say I adhere to the scientific method and agnosticism.
  • In theistic matters, atheism similarly has agnosticism built-in. I do not feel the need to add another adjective to atheism, nor do I feel that it's appropriate for me to have to use the agnostic label instead of the atheist label. quite correctly points out that they are not mutually exclusive.
• If someone tells me I should use the label "agnostic" because I should be at least a little accepting of a god-like entity, then I simply disagree, at least until there is sufficient evidence to do so.