An Agnostic Manifesto (Agnosticism)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Sunday, August 08, 2010, 14:18 (5009 days ago) @ dhw

dhw asks how far I would endorse Rosenbaum's "Agnostic Manifesto"
The answer is: very little, but I will go into more detail.-In his subtitle he claims "At least we know what we don't know."
This sounds clever but means very little. There may well be lots of 
things out there in the universe or even within the world of thought 
that we don't know about, and that we don't know that we don't know 
about. Who knew about quantisation of energy before Planck found it 
necessary to postulate to explain black-body radiation? Who knew 
about the fantastic geysers on one of the moons of Saturn before they 
were photographed by the Cassini probe?-He says "Agnosticism ... is radical skepticism, doubt in the possibility 
of certainty." This doesn't strike me as being very "radical" it's just 
the normal mind-set of a rational person. There is very little about 
which one can be certain, except perhaps 2+2=4, but 17+25=42 I would 
be less certain about without checking the calculation. -He next tries defining "Agnostics" as "doubters of religious belief". 
But there are all sorts of religious belief, so such agnosticism is
far too vague. -He then advocates "a new agnosticism", one that sees "atheism as 
much a faith-based creed as the most orthodox of the religious 
variety." Well, if there are such atheists, as an atheist myself I 
would be just as much against them as I am against dogmatic theists, 
but I doubt if they exist in any force worth bothering about.-He claims that such atheists have "the certainty that they can or 
will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence." 
This assumes an enormous amount. That "universe" has a clear meaning. 
That "coming into existence" means something.-Here he is now narrowing down the scope of his agnosticism considerably. 
He claims that "the fundamental question" is: "Why is there something 
rather than nothing?". These atheists apparently "seem never to 
consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for 
something to create itself from nothing" and fail to realise that this 
question is "a fundamental mystery". -He cites theories of multiverses and fluctuations in the vacuum but 
considers none of them "persuasive", but are these theories actually 
aimed at answering his fundamental question? I think not. -Oh dear! He has been on a Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship! No wonder 
his mind is so befogged! -He accepts "most of the New Atheist's criticism of religious bad 
behavior over the centuries, and of theology itself." So that surely 
makes him an atheist.-He just doesn't "accept turning science into a new religion". Well 
neither do I nor do any of the New Atheists that I've read. -He challenges any atheist to send him their answer to the question: 
"Why is there something rather than nothing?" Well I would ask him to 
clarify what he means by these terms. Does "something" mean a material 
something having mass? Is "nothing" something?-He maintains that agnostics "aren't disguised creationists". 
Well, it was because of the creationist tendencies that I noticed in dhw's 
tract that brought me here in the first place.-He cites Huxley's original definition of agnosticism: "... it is wrong 
for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any 
proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies 
that certainty". This is posed in terms of Aristotelian binary logic. 
This should now be replaced by probabilistic evaluations. As I've noted 
above absolute certainty is impossoble. However reasonable certainty 
can be attained, and as Huxley says it depends on providing adequate 
evidence, and I would add clear definitions.-He asks for "Humility in the face of mystery". But I would ask for 
humility in the face of lack of evidence. If there is a mystery we 
should try our darndest to solve it, seek out the evidence with a 
forceful determined attitude.
 
He mentions "the problem of consciousness" and allies himself with 
the "Mysterians" who argue that we cannot know the nature of 
consciousness while being within consciousness. As you will be aware 
I consider this "problem of consciousness" to be overblown, but that 
is a question we have discussed elsewhere.

--
GPJ