A question for agnostics.

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I'm an atheist, and I'm not agnostic. I know there is no God.

In my experience many theists / deists / whatever, and the vast majority of atheists, will identify as 'agnostic'. Agnosticism is an epistemological claim about the limits of knowledge. When you identify as agnostic about deities, you're saying that you believe you can't know whether or not any deities exist.

The traditional view in philosophy is that knowledge is 'justified true belief', and obviously, if we use that definition, many people would probably drop the agnostic label. Largely due to Gettier problems, most philosophers these days have rather stricter requirements for knowledge. However, even on most of these stricter requirements, many people would still lose their agnosticism.

If you consider yourself agnostic, I'd be interested to see what your conception of knowledge is. What conditions must a belief meet for you to count it as knowledge? Given those conditions, why do you consider yourself agnostic?

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Agnostic - just another word for simple-mindedness. "I don't know so I can't say"

They're the people who don't vote.

In the USA, it is probably considered more polite to label one's self as an agnostic rather than an atheist.

I identify as an atheist; I don't worry about being polite.

Actually, not all atheists say they know for sure that God doesn't exist.

Most atheists don't believe due to a lack of evidence. It's the "strong" atheists who say without a doubt that God does not exist.

Agnostic: I don't know what to believe about God's existence.

Normal Atheist: I don't believe in God.

Strong Atheist: I know for sure God does not exist.

In my opinion, agnosticism and normal atheism are much more rational than strong atheism.

Agreed. But I am curious what rational arguments a strong atheist would present in support of strong atheism. It could make for a lively discussion in a different thread.

Er - that's exactly what I said in my post. Here's the relevant sentence:

In my experience many theists / deists / whatever, and the vast majority of atheists, will identify as 'agnostic'.

It's quite common to see atheists calling themselves 'agnostic atheists', on the grounds that, sure, they don't believe in God, but they can't know that there's no God.


What I'm questioning is the idea that you need to hold a belief without doubt in order for that belief to count as knowledge. I say I know there is no God, so I'm not agnostic. However, I don't claim to know without a doubt there is no God.

As I mentioned, the traditional view in philosophy is that knowledge is justified true belief. I think that captures everyday use of the word fairly well. However, on that definition, the majority of people who call themselves agnostic would drop the agnostic label. So what's going on here?

It seems to me that when it comes to questions of the divine, people adopt far stricter knowledge conditions than they do for everything else. Personally, I take theological theories on the same terms as any other kind of theory; I don't grant them privileged knowledge conditions, so I'm able to say I know there is no God, just as I can say I know there aren't five elephants in my garden. Consider:

(1) I believe there are not five elephants in my garden.
(2) I believe it's true that there are not five elephants in my garden (obviously, given (1).)
(3) I believe my belief that there are not five elephants in my garden is justified.

(4) I believe there is no God.
(5) I believe it's true that there is no God.
(6) I believe my belief that there is no God is justified.

There's a lot of 'agnostic atheists' who would assent to (4) to (6) (and if you change the 'no' in those statements to 'a', there's a lot of theists who would assent to them; you can alter it further for deism etc). My point is, if you can say things like 'I know there are not five elephants in my garden', 'I know my car is blue', 'I know there is an oven in my kitchen', 'I know I live in the UK', 'I know humans and the other primates evolved from a common ancestor', etc, then for most people, it doesn't make much sense to identify as agnostic (which means they don't know whether there is a God or not). I think a lot of people aren't using the word 'knowledge' consistently, and I think if they did, they'd probably reconsider their agnosticism.

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Last edited by you_are_what_you_is on 03 Feb 2011, 1:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is a great difference in claiming to know what you cannot know and living your life on the basis of what seems obviously workable and realistic. Knowledge is not determined by a macho stance of denying all possibility of being wrong. I call myself an atheist because that is how I arrange all my decisions on matters of consequence. But anybody who is sane always leaves open the possibility of being wrong, however minute that possibility may be. The likelihood of there being a god seems to me negligible and not worthy of consideration in any aspect of living. But I could be wrong since all understanding is fallible and worthy of reconsideration.

I'm atheist because I haven't seen any reason to believe in God so far. You can't be dead certain about anything in the world, but you can be certain enough.

In what sense can somebody not know whether or not God exists? What conditions must a belief meet for you to count it as knowledge?

I agree that knowledge claims don't require denying all possibility of being wrong. That's pretty much my point. As I said, I know God doesn't exist (so I'm not agnostic), but I don't know without a doubt that God doesn't exist.

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So you're saying God MIGHT exist?

[I'll just say now that I'm an Agnostic who used to be an Atheist]

That makes no sense. The universe is much larger than a garden. You can say that there aren't five elephants in your garden because:
1.You know what an elephant is, and..
2.You have the ability to see your own garden all at once.

Can you see the entire universe? No. Do you know what "God" is? No. Nobody does (if one exists, that is). Though perhaps if you *could* see the entire universe, you could disprove existence of the Judeo-Christian God. However, that wouldn't disprove the existence of a god/higher power/etc.

As I said above, I used to call myself an Atheist. However, now I call myself an Agnostic-Atheist, because I realized that humans lack the capacity to even prove that there is no God.

I don't find it necessary to know that God doesn't exist to arrange my life on that basis. Ignoring God has no repercussions from God although my fellow humans are another problem altogether.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Although I personally believe in the existence of God (deist style), I also can't know whether or not he does exist. Such a being is too big for me to fully analyze and make clear facts of.

There is no such thing as sanity.

I know there is no god up to the limit of my knowledge. I am agnostic to things outside.