Agnosticism Meta-Thread


A first attempt at a meta-analysis of discussions of agnosticism

AGNOSTICISM META-THREAD

There is a discussion at Majikthise about agnosticism (which I've discussed previously), and I thought I would write about it. Rather than weighing in at the site itself, I am going to try to analyze the discussion (i.e., start a metadiscussion -- most likely with myself, consdering the low rate of traffic here). The point is to try to understand what sorts of things people say, and why, when the topic is agnosticism versus atheism. I plan to analyze more such comment threads in the future, to see if any common patterns come up. (Of course, I'm only doing this because I've noticed common patterns in the past.)

I will state my biases first: I consider atheism a more rational position than agnosticism, because it is more consistent with our natural habit to disbelieve propositions for which we have zero evidence. (A "slogan" for this attitude could be: if you don't disbelieve that, then what do you disbelieve?) Also, to "leave the door open", as the agnostic does, strikes me as symptomatic of a kind of subconscious Pascal's wager, wherein the self-described agnostic just can't bring themself to close the door completely on the possibility of deities, an afterlife, etc.

So - what I take to be the thesis of Lindsay (the blog owner)'s post is: Even though one cannot prove the negative proposition "No deities exist", in the absence of any positive evidence the default position to take should be atheism and not agnosticism. The reason for this is that this is the default position we always take on other propositions that have the same amount of (i.e., zero) evidence. It is only in theological discussions that the option of "agnosticism" even comes up. This is expressed finely by Lindsay's last sentence:

"If we talk about belief in God the same way we talk about belief in other propositions, then it's perfectly natural to call yourself a non-believer."

So, to the comments.

•The blog entry dates from 11:36 PST, Sunday, Dec. 18 2005.
•As of Sunday night, 20:00 PST there were 52 comments. On average that's one post every 12 minutes, over a 10-hour period.

Some themes of discussion (which I seen many times when this subject has come up previously):
•"(some) Atheists are religious too" / "Atheism is as much a religion as theism" (Egarwaen, Aeolus, 1984_Was_not_a_shopping_list)
•Nitty-gritty details of how, exactly, agnosticism, atheism, etc., are defined (lack of belief in god? belief that there are no gods?) (Matt P., Patrick, bob koepp)
•Other creative "Russell's teapot" situations (phone company killing JFK) (Lindsay, David)
•"I've had mystical experiences"/"Mystical experiences are a good reason to hold out for belief in deities" (Mnemosyne, 1984_Was_not_a_shopping_list, dan)

Analysis of examples of give-and-take, excerpts:
(1) Matt P. --> "..[as] a person self-describing as agnostic does not hold such a belief [in a god] .. he or she seems to me to be clearly an atheist"
Egarwaen -->"Untrue. They can be unsure whether or not God exists... This is different from belief or disbelief."
Matt P. --> "I agree, that is different from belief or disbelief. The querent, however, in my experience tends to be asking only about belief or disbelief, not the reasoning the respondent used to arrive at that position."
(no further response from Egarwaen).

This excerpt illustrates the class of "nitpicking" exchanges; we'll see how often these come up later.

(2) Jesse M. "all minds that we know of are tied to physical structures like brains, and are a product of evolution, so the idea of an eternal disembodied mind is a radical departure from this."
1984: "But what about the example of the email packet being sent by wireless ... if these energy packets can be converted and transmitted, then, do they not exist independently of a physical body..."
Jesse M. "You are talking as though "energy" is somehow less physical than matter, which makes me think you are conflating "energy" in the sense used by scientists with some more spiritual usage of the word."
1984: "The "energy" I'm trying to isolate here is the energy of a hypothetical God's mind, which, you reliably inform us, is a physical item."
1984: "since thought itself is intangible and invisible, is it not conceivable that God's thought took a similarly alien form...?"
Jesse M.: "I don't see anything logically impossible about such a disembodied mind, and it's how most people think of God, but as I said there's no precedent for it in anything we've experienced."
1984:"Yet if energy is actually a physical thing, ... the thought energy of the mind _is_ such a physical substrate. I think that, rather than leading to a disembodied mind of God, it suggests that every mind _is_ a body."
Jesse M.: "but why call such an entity "God" rather than, say, "an alien superintelligence"? "
(after several further posts bringing up other topics:)
1984: "OK, I'm going to ruminate on that last one."

This excerpt illustrates the class of "One guy trying to shoehorn his admittedly poor understanding of physics into a framework that legitimizes his favorite beliefs; and another guy patiently going along with it". It is characterized by goalpost shifting -- note how Jesse M. raises many points that 1984 does not consider (points which are indeed germane to the original blog post); 1984 prefers instead to talk about thought energy and god's brain. Significantly, 1984 accomodates a complete reversal in a position which he had held to be important (at first, minds are nonphysical; then Jesse convinces 1984 that they are in fact physical) yet 1984's overall outlook does not change.

Some miscellaneous numbers:
Number of 'nonserious' posts (jokes, platitudes, rants): 7/52
Number of posts mentioning the Holocaust: 2/52
Number of posts mentioning Richard Dawkins: 8/52
Number of posts in which a person changes their opinion as a result of being convinced by another post: 1/52

Concluding remarks:
First, it should be remarked that the comments on a blog can in no way reflect poorly on the blog itself; however, they can reflect well upon it, as good minds are a scarce commodity. These comments do reflect well on this blog, since there is little or no sign of flame-war. However, it is not my goal to be critical or praiseworthy about any particular blog, but rather to try and study the way in which people talk about a particular narrow subject. This first excursion has been entirely subjective; I would like to write some small programs to do some more objective analysis (i.e., how soon is Dawkins mentioned; what percentage of the posts refer to personal mystical experiences, etc.)

Posted: Wed - December 21, 2005 at 08:58 PM | | | |

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