How do agnostics live? (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, June 05, 2008, 21:02 (5802 days ago) @ Mark

Mark quotes my statement that "Agnosticism, in contrast to atheist assumption and religious dogma, only believes what is known, and admits to ignorance of the rest." He takes up the distinction between "believe" and "know", and wonders how agnostics live ... suspecting that they are "atheist in practice". Atheists live "without religious observance and without relying on the texts or leaders of any religion for moral guidance". He asks: "Can an agnostic really only believe what is known?" - My remark was strictly within the context of atheism versus theism versus agnosticism (which = the impossibility of knowing ... or, in the more general modern sense, the inability to decide ... whether God exists). I certainly didn't mean it to be applied to any other area of life, such as moral guidance. After all, if we only believed what we knew, we wouldn't even sit down and eat our breakfast. (I believe the chair is solid, I believe the egg is good, I believe no-one has poisoned my coffee.) - There are, I suppose, no objective criteria as to where belief turns into knowledge. Even the "scientific process of observation and reason" can come up with "knowledge" which later turns out to have been (false) belief. But there are some kinds of fact that are (almost) universally recognized, and so we have a tacit understanding that they do constitute knowledge: I know that today is Thursday, that Paris is the capital of France, that 2 + 2 = 4. To be specific, in our religious context, if a Christian says "I believe/trust that there is a merciful God", I see no problem, but if he says "I know that there is a merciful God", I will ask where are the objective criteria that turn belief into knowledge. There are none. And in contrast to 2 + 2 = 4, this is not (almost) universally recognized as a fact. - This brings us to your question: how do agnostics live? Without religious observance and without moral guidance from religious texts and leaders is probably right in most cases, but both the past and the present teach us that religious texts and leaders often provide moral guidance that is repugnant to those who believe in humanitarian values. Neither atheism nor agnosticism prescribes sets of moral values, because by definition they are only concerned with the existence or non-existence of God. But disbelief or non-belief in God does not mean the absence of personal or social ethics, and indeed these may well coincide with religious ethics. Even the atheist Dawkins lends full support to a code which he quotes from an atheist website, and which I have also reproduced in the "guide": "Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. In all things strive to do no harm. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder." (http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/new10c.html). - Of course, not all atheists and agnostics abide by that code. Nor do all Christians. But my point is that atheists and agnostics are perfectly capable of living good, productive, responsible lives without the guidance of religion.