Agnosticism and Atheism

There is commonly quite some degree of confusion around these terms. Dawkins didn’t make it all that much better.

Richard Dawkins formulated a scale in his The God Delusion which I believe serves only to further confound matters. Basically, it went like this:

Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know.’

Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’

Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’

Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’

Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’

Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’

Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung “knows” there is one.’

This is quite insufficient, and he ignores several possible positions which are possible. Most of all; how do we judge these probabilities? It’s likely he meant them as pure approximations or metaphora, but still. I do not see any way by which I could estimate how likely it is that there is a god; out of the set of all possible worlds, I cannot quite ascertain how many should have a god. There’s just no data to make that judgment… Unless one holds that it is logically necessary or impossible that there is a god. At least positions 1 and 7 are thus clear in meaning.

Now to the position I think he ignores, or just is not really aware of or concerned with: actual agnosticism. “I do not know,” even as to the extent of likelihood and whatever else.

It’s often charged that agnosticism is really just atheism. That is easy to show wrong. Let B be the modal operator of belief, and γ the proposition “there is a god” (∃x(God(x)), for you pedants).

Agnosticism:

I do not believe there is a god and I do not believe there is no god.

(¬Bγ & ¬B¬γ)

Atheism:

I believe there is no god.

(B¬γ)

As is evident, the propositions are different and irreconcilable. The set of atheistic beliefs will be different from the set of agnostic, {¬∃x(God(x)} versus ∅.

As for me, I usually call myself atheist, but I recently abandoned it in favour of agnosticism. “God” is such a loose term, and so many possible hypotheses about one or more of them have never been thought up, much less tested. I am atheist as regards to some gods (many forms of the Abrahamic one, Thor, Cthulhu). But on the whole there are so many I have not yet considered, and some which may even be impossible to say much about, and some which I have considered but were simply impossible to say much about (deistic thought is full of that, and then we have the Cartesian demon, and so on).

(ohoho, I can use formal logic, that means I are clevers!)