An Atheist with a Tall Hat

Humanist magazine posted an article called An Atheist with a Tall Hat On: The Forgotten History of Agnosticism. The opening argument is that atheism and agnosticism are the same.

One sometimes gets the impression that religious and nonreligous people alike consider agnosticism a more rational and sophisticated creed than atheism. On the contrary, agnosticism differs from atheism in name only. The distinction between the two is really about class and politics, not substance.

The article continues with some accurate background on agnosticism before it makes a false comparison to atheism.

To maintain his hard-fought respectability, Huxley unveiled the term in 1869 at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society, an eclectic group of leading believers and nonbelievers in Victorian Britain. He argued that Christians and atheists both shared a belief in the certainty of their views and that this certainty was unjustified. For Huxley, rather than claiming special knowledge, to be agnostic was to profess one’s lack of knowledge.

This seems a novel position only if one understands “atheism” to mean a positive defense of God’s nonexistence. But this wasn’t the meaning that many nineteenth-century atheists accepted.

This is where the writer strays when he says agnosticism is only a novel position if atheism is a positive defense of God's nonexistence. Claiming agnosticism says no such thing about atheism. Atheism is and can continue to be a rejection of God's nonexistence as simply not proven. The burden of proof is on the believer making those claims so atheism doesn't serve as a positive defense with or without the existence of agnosticism.

Agnosticism

What we know and don't know is much more important and worthy of consideration than what we believe and disbelieve.

ag·nos·ti·cism

1. the doctrine or belief of an agnostic (a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.)

2. An intellectual doctrine or attitude affirming the uncertainty of all claims to ultimate knowledge.

Return of Agnostic Universe

Hello Earth and the rest of the universe! I used to host a website and blog called Agnostic Universe for many years. I let it go because it took up more time and money than it was worth since I managed and paid for the website.

I'm relaunching that content here on Blogger. This can now exist as long as the Blogger platform survives. I'm starting with reposting the Agnostic Library. These are the various writings of others that I assembled when I was first exploring agnosticism. I'll also post the book I wrote called An Agnostic Guide to Life, the Universe, and Everything. It's a more structured set of my musings as I explored agnosticism. The links for these are at the top of the site. I'll probably get back to blogging too so watch this space for any new musings I may have about agnosticism.