User:Tsinoyboi/Agnostic theism OLD

This article a sandbox. For the actual article, see Agnostic theism.

Agnostic theism is the philosophy that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. An agnostic theist is one who disavows knowledge of God's existence but chooses to believe in God in spite of this.

The position

Knowledge is true and believed and...

The validity of the theist's position is debated because believers typically state "God exists" as a fact, implying knowledge of it on their behalf. The agnostic theist however does not state that. Rather he says that he doesn't know whether God exists or not but simply believes in God. This fits the definition of implicit faith (not to be confused with blind faith), namely that faith is the firm belief in something for which they've experienced no justification. References dating back almost 2000 years also define faith as a belief in something that has no visible evidence (Hebrews 11:1), and even laud this kind of faith as a worthy and admirable trait to possess. Not only does this mean that agnostic theists have one of the most faith-oriented belief systems, it also may be reasonable to assume that many who claim to have faith in God unwittingly fall into this category of "agnostic theism". However when one claims to know there is a God, their faith must have become dormant in the process of gaining this knowledge, so that they can no longer be considered an agnostic theist.

The classical philosophical understanding of knowledge is that knowledge is justified true belief. On this model it is reasonable to assert that one may hold a belief, and that belief may be true, without asserting that one knows it. Agnostic Theism could be interpreted as an admission that it is not possible to justify one's belief in God sufficiently for it to be considered known in this model.

Agnostic Theism is sometimes paralleled with the process employed by science called Scientific Method. It is supposed that when a scientist asserts a hypothesis, she believes in it faithfully. Her belief might be true, but it is not known, since its truth has not been established justifiably. Agnostic Theists sometimes claim that their belief holds the same status as a scientific conjecture. However, when the Agnostic Theist claims to hold his beliefs without 'knowing' them, he does so because of the overwhelming unjustifiability of a belief in God. On the contrary, the scientist (in best practise) holds her hypothesis to be conjecture even if she has overwhelming evidence in support of it, because the principles of science are to recognise its own fallibility. What is interesting in this case is that although the Agnostic Theist wishes to admit the impossibility of knowledge of God, nevertheless, they wish to raise the status of their beliefs in Him by comparison with science. This could be argued to be an attempt at oblique justification of their beliefs.

Occurrences

At first glance it appears that this position is much less common than agnostic atheism. If so, then the reason that agnostics prefer agnostic atheism might be because Occam's Razor suggests that if there doesn't seem to be a need for God, then God most likely doesn't exist. This coincides well with the agnostic position that God's existence is unknown, unimportant, or unknowable.

Agnostics who do subscribe to agnostic theism may do so because of Pascal's Wager, proposed by Blaise Pascal the mathematician, which states that the expected value of believing in God outweighs that of disbelieving (roughly, what there is to be lost by believing in a non-existent God is finite, but if God exists and you don't believe in Him the loss is infinite). In this case their belief evolves from a logical argument rather than from an intuition.

Upon deeper inspection the number of agnostic theists might actually be far larger than is evidenced by the self-proclaimed agnostic theists. In Atheism: The Case Against God^[1] George H. Smith claims that if you scratch the surface of a theist you find that there is an agnostic - insinuating that all theists are agnostic theists. Of course it's nearly impossible to justify such a claim (similar to proving that someone is thinking a particular thought). However, many theists claim to have a belief or faith in God, but also admit to not having a sure knowledge that He exists, thereby giving some credence to Smith's claim. Such theists generally don't even know what an agnostic theist is, so instead they identify themselves as belonging to a more common theist group. It's difficult to guess how many fit this description, but it's clear that this group is potentially much larger than the self-proclaimed group of agnostic theists. Of course this larger than assumed size would come at the expense of the assumed size of theists.

Another factor that may camouflage those who should qualify as agnostic theists is the mechanics of change that are intrinsic to this belief system. In short, a theist becomes an agnostic theist when they lose their confidence in the existence of God to some degree but still choose to believe in him. Most non-atheists will admit that they experience such doubts, many of them experiencing it on a regular basis, but in time if they experience something that assures them of the existence of God, then they will no longer qualify as agnostic theists. This dynamic is typified in the Bible verse Mark 9:24 that reads "I believe, Lord help thou my unbelief."

Also, "faith always without exception precedes logic, intellect, judgment, reason, and the seeking of experimental data" (Neidhardt, "Personal Knowledge: An Epistemology of Discovery," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Vol. 29, No. 3, September 1977)), and by definition agnostic theism is a completely faith-based belief system, so those with this belief system centered on mere faith in God will usually not stay agnostic theists for long. For example, agnostic theists have varying degrees of faith in God, and those with the most faith in God will be motivated to actively pursue proving their hypothesis that there is a God. Eventually they'll pursue this until they feel satisfied with the evidence (howbeit ever personal) that they've collected - enough so that they will no longer qualify as agnostic theists. That is what faith intrinsically does as an agent of change: it motivates one to move beyond faith where one can say they know what they believe is true. Unlike doubt (the key element in agnostic atheism), faith cannot be easily maintained indefinitely. It will more likely either progress to a sure knowledge or it will diminish into doubt. Those with very little faith in the existence of God will not generate the motivation necessary to prove their hypothesis, and will either neglect the issue and/or eventually lose their faith in the hypothesis.

A final dynamic that prevents agnostic theism from getting the visibility it may deserve is that many if not most people (at least in western culture) consider the pursuit of knowledge superior to the pursuit of belief - and that consideration is contrary to the whole objective of agnostic theism, which is a pursuit of belief.

Such dynamics make it nearly impossible to maintain a large and consistent community of support - which also explains why agnostic theist support groups are practically non-existent, and why so little concerted effort is made to promote the belief system.

Criticism

This position is generally looked down upon both by theists and strong atheists because the agnostic theist remains without sure knowledge willingly. Most people want to be sure that they are in the right, and don't understand that one should give up that certainty. Also, both sides see agnostic theism as a stepstone towards the other.

These criticisms are also applicable to agnosticism; nevertheless, agnostic theists seem to have an advantage over holders of other positions in that they do not have the indecision of the agnostic or the unprovable knowledge of the non-agnostic theist/strong atheist. They have a belief that they are aware of, and can therefore be considered more conscious than most.

Many agnostic theists claim that not only do they not know God exists, but that it is also impossible to know with any certainty whether God exists; then, they are strong agnostics. Note than in that case they believe that God is unprovable, which they might be aware of or not.

Another criticism is the concept forwarded by many religions that salvation is dependent on knowing God (John 17:3). Thus adherents of those religions shouldn't consider themselves agnostic theists by choice, and strong-agnostic theists would not be a good fit for such religions.

George H. Smith's rebuttal

In Atheism: The Case Against God^[2] George H. Smith argues that all agnosticism is a form of atheism (defined here as "lacking a belief in a deity"). His argument against agnostic theism is that it is contradictory to state that a being is inherently or currently unknowable, and yet positively assert a belief in its existence. His argument goes:

• "One cannot possibly know that something exists without some knowledge of what it is that exists."
• If it is declared unknowable, the concept of "god" becomes meaningless. The agnostic theist's statement of belief therefore becomes equivalent to "a blark exists."
  • This unspecified belief ("I believe in 'something'") is equivalent to nonbelief ("I am not convinced by any particular religious claim"). Therefore the so-called agnostic theist is in fact an atheist (by being unable to assert a positive belief in any specific deity).
  • It ensues that all agnosticism is a form of atheism.
• If the agnostic theist still wishes to believe, he must ascribe attributes of some sort to the belief. However, they would then be claiming some knowledge of their deity and are therefore no longer agnostics but are theists instead.

Smith concisely describes the paradox on pg 44:

To posit the existence of something which, by its nature, cannot be known to man is to submerge oneself in hopeless contradictions. [...] When one claims that something is unknowable, can one produce knowledge in support of this claim? If one cannot, one's assertion is arbitrary and utterly without merit. If one can, one has accomplished the impossible: one has knowledge of the unknowable. [...] The theist who is called upon to explain the content of his belief - and who then introduces the "unknowable" as a supposed characteristic of the concept itself - is saying, in effect: "I will explain the concept of god by pointing out that it cannot be explained."

This criticism largely applies to strong-agnostic theists, those agnostics who claim that it is impossible to know God, and not the agnostic theists who merely claim that they personally do not know God. However, knowing God and knowing whether God exists could be seen as being separate issues.

See also

• Deism

Notes

1. ^ Atheism: The Case Against God, George H. Smith, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-124-X

External link

• What is Agnostic Theism? - from about.com