During an afternoon of boredom, I suddenly had a eureka moment. I came to the realization that we are all agnostic. I am, you are, the Pope is, and so is Richard Dawkins and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Big Bird too.
Not a particularly profound thought, but one that had not occurred to me before. Kind of like the moment you “get” how to tie your shoes as a child, or when you realize that your parents aren’t infallible.
The word “agnostic” means “without knowledge.” From my perspective, it’s impossible to know whether God exists or not. Atheists believe there is no God. Theists believe in one, or many. But belief is far different than knowledge. Neither group has any hard evidence to disprove the other. Therefore, everyone is agnostic.
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York conducted a survey in 2001 and found that only 0.5% of Americans identified themselves as agnostic. That means the other 99.5% are in serious denial!
I approached my friend and colleague Raul, an evangelical Christian studying to be a minister. Raul is a young man that represents everything that is good about Christianity, so I had to get his thoughts on my new found truth.
“Raul,” I said. “You’re an agnostic. Everyone is for that matter.”
“What is agnostic?” he asked with his thick Brazilian accent.
“An agnostic is someone who thinks it is impossible to know if God exists or not.”
“Ah, agnosticista. I’m a Christian, you know this. I know God exists.”
“Raul, deep down, you have to admit that you don’t absolutely know for sure.”
He paused for a moment, formulating his English, at the same time formulating his best Christian apologetic response.
“I don’t know if the sun will come up tomorrow. But I have faith that it will. Sometimes it’s cloudy or stormy, and I can’t see the sun. But I know it’s there.”
It sounded like something from a C.S. Lewis book. I could have responding with something like, “but we know the sun exists. You’re confusing evidence with belief,” but I decided to leave it at that. Any response would have led to a never-ending game of ring-around-the-roses filled with metaphors and rhetoric.
But leaving the conversation, I was impressed with Raul’s deep conviction. His belief in God is so strong that it is as good as fact to him. There’s no question in his mind. I envied him. Perhaps belief means more than knowledge?
Regardless of my pious friend, I had a strong conviction of my own. I called up Stuart. He is a spiritual man, not religious, mind you. He reads the Tao Te Ching every day. He has written articles about the Prophet Muhammad for national publications. He is a self-professed agnostic who can argue the case for God and against God with equal eloquence. Stuart is a smart guy, fifteen years my elder and slightly balding. He is grounded, open-minded, wise. Surely he would agree with my theory of universal agnosticism.
I explained to him that no one has true knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God.
“Spoken like a true agnostic,” he laughed.
“What the hell does that mean Stu?”
“You have no strong conviction either way,” he said. “You’re not a true believer and you’re not atheist.”
“Exactly, I’m agnostic, like everyone.”
“No, you can’t call everyone agnostic. A believer in God doesn’t question His existence. God is God, case closed. The same goes for Atheists. You can’t understand either side because you’re stuck in the middle.”
“But nobody has knowledge Stu, you know…facts, proof. Its just belief.”
“Do you even know what an agnostic is?” he asked.
“Don’t patronize me Stu.”
“I’ll tell you,” he started. “An agnostic believes that the reality of God is unknowable. Did you catch that, believes. They believe something, and you believe something different. You are agnostic. They are not.”
“No Stu. Agnosticism is not a belief. It’s reality.”
“That’s arrogance man. What makes you think you’re smarter than everyone; that everyone is in the dark are you are in the light. Agnosticism is your reality. Atheism is an equally valid reality. So is theism.”
“Don’t get all existential on my ass,” I said.
“Do you even know what existential means?”
“Shut up Stu.”
Stuart’s argument was flawed, but I can see where he was coming from. He agrees that one can’t know the truth about the existence of God. Our disagreement wasn’t about whether all people are agnostic; it was about the definition of the word “agnostic.”
I believe one can be a Christian or Muslim, or a member of any other religion, and still be agnostic; still have uncertainty. To me, the two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps my definition is skewed?
So I did some research. What is an agnostic?
Thomas H. Huxley coined the term in the 1860 and defined it this way: “It is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.”
So, according to Huxley’s definition, my theory hold true. But the problem with words is they evolve with usage over time. At one time, the word “gay” meant happy or merry. Apparently, the word “agnostic” has changed too.
Today, the word is an umbrella term that refers to a wide diversity of belief systems, much like Christianity. Self-professed agnostics could fall into any of the following possible categories:
- one who doesn’t know
- one who doesn’t care
- one who doesn’t know but will live their life with the assumption that God exists
- one who doesn’t know but will live their life with the assumption that God does not exist
- one who cannot give an opinion because there is no way of proving the existence or non-existence of God given currently available knowledge
- one who cannot give an opinion because there is no way to know, with certainty, anything about God, now and in the future
- one who believes in God, but does not know anything about God at this time
- one who believes in God, but also believes that there is no possibility of knowing anything about God, now or in the future.
Taking all of these categories and merging them into one updated, modern, broad definition, I came up with this: An agnostic is simply undecided about whether or not God exists.
Still thinking about the conversation with Stu, I realized I was being arrogant in thinking 99.5% of Americans are delusional. I suddenly had the urge to call him back and say, “You call me arrogant? What about you? What makes you think that your definition of the term is the only valid one? That, my friend, is what I call arrogant.”
But I didn’t. Why bother. I was content. My eureka moment was merely a thought passing through a mind filled with passing thoughts. This one just happened to linger.
After all, “agnostic” is simply a label. I’ve never had much use for labels in the past, why start now.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Todd…. First I agree 100% with you and Second…. you are not the only one that acknowledges this, though we are few. The term Agnosticism still means exactly what it meant from the original definition, but in time has gained some additions to itself. The core meaning is still retained though as anything else. Today you have Theist Agnostics, Atheist Agnostics, Hard Agnostics, Soft Agnostics and on and on and on……. Geez! But all kidding aside, an agnostic is the person on the side of the road while the rest are traveling to belief in a deity or away from belief in a deity or whatever the subject at hand may be. Having belief one way or the other or being decided or undecided has nothing to do with the cold hard facts and the fact is I don’t know if there is or isn’t , you don’t and no one else doest factually. There are somethings that we believe we have knowledge of 100% factually, but just refer to science, or within science to physics and you will even find change of “facts” there a lot of times.
The main point I am making here is if you KNOW for certain, with 100% fact then you know. Otherwise you don’t and even though you may not acknowledge it or profess it, that makes you an Agnostic. To end, you were not being arrogant. Probably 80% of the world at one time believed that the world was flat or that the sun revolved around the earth and that was science at the time. Maybe in the future humanity with know, but at the moment We Are All Agnostic.