Fuck Yeah Agnosticism

zeitvox:

XHerakleitos - 11/15/10

Puzzling over a trend to dismiss agnosticism, I ran into a post by Caesar, the esteemed Imperator at Arstechnica:

Agnosticism is the most reasonable position to take with regards to the supernatural. Let me unpack this, because it’s possible to read that sentence in 1,000 different ways.

First, my view argues that certainty either that God does or does not exist is a less reasonable position than the position that we cannot and do not know with certainty one way or another.

For the purposes of this thesis, I am only speaking to certainty, to claims of knowledge. That is, I believe it is possible to be agnostic on the question and believe or not believe in God. So, belief is a state of assent based on something less than knowledge.

Further, I argue that the claim to know for certain that there is no “god” is no more rooted in reason than to claim to know for certain that there is a “god.”

Unfashionable as it may be, Caesar’s thesis certainly appears most wise. Moreover, a robust agnosticism seems advisable when we regard it as likely one of the most spirited echoes of the beginnings of Western science. Is it merely an appeal to authority or is there something to this spark which bears remembering or rediscovering?

21c  I went looking for wise men: I went to one of those reputed wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I could refute the oracle and say to it: ‘This man is wiser than I, but you said I was.’ Then, when I examined this man…my experience was something like this: I thought that he appeared wise to many people and especially to himself, but he was not. I then tried to show him that he thought himself wise, but that he was not. As a result he came to dislike me, and so did many of the bystanders. So I withdrew and thought to myself: ‘I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.’

One can say quite a bit about what’s going on here, not to mention the strange tension where Socrates is on a mission from a god in trying to refute the god’s oracle. But essentially, there in the Apology, Socrates underscores the importance of wonder (thaumazein) as wellspring of all wisdom…

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