What is the state of belief of an atheist? An atheist is often defined as someone who does not believe in God. It is quite true that an atheist does not believe in God, but that is insufficient to define the state of belief of an atheist. A tree or a rock or a lizard does not believe in God either--but it would be bizarre to describe such beings as atheists. This is because they are not believers at all, in anything. And even a dog or a chimpanzee, which plausibly do have beliefs, are hardly to be characterized as atheists. Furthermore, an agnostic does not believe in God either, since he suspends belief on the question. What is missing, obviously, is the fact that an atheist disbelieves in the existence of God—he believes that there is no God. He doesn’t merely lack belief in a divinity; he positively believes in the absence of a divinity. Moreover, he takes his negative belief to be rational, to be backed by reasons. He doesn’t just find himself with a belief that there is no God; he comes to that belief by what he takes to be rational means—that is, he takes his belief to be justified. He may not regard his atheistic belief as certain, but he certainly takes it to be reasonable—as reasonable as any belief he holds. Just by holding the belief he regards himself as rationally entitled to it (or else he wouldn’t, as a responsible believer, believe it—that being the nature of belief). Also, given the nature of belief, he takes himself to know that there is no God: for to believe that p is to take oneself to know that p. The atheist, like any believer in a proposition, regards his belief as an instance of knowledge (of course, it may not be, but he necessarily takes is to be so). So an atheist is someone who thinks he knows there is no God. Thus he is prepared responsibly to assert that there is no God. The atheist regards himself as knowing there is no God in just the sense that he regards himself as knowing, say, that the earth is round. He claims to know the objective truth about the universe in respect of a divinity—that the universe contains no such entity. Of course, this entails that he claims to know that other people’s beliefs on this question are false, i.e. the theists who believe that there is a God. He also claims to know that the agnostics are mistaken too: they suspend belief when it is rational to commit oneself on the question. If an agnostic asserts that only a state of non-belief about the existence of God is rational, the atheist takes the view that this is false: it is rational to hold positively that there is no God, not merely to be neutral on the question. The atheist thus claims to know that theists and agnostics are epistemically defective—that they have false and unwarranted beliefs about the question of God’s existence. He then has reason to wish to alter their beliefs so as to bring them into line with the truth. True beliefs are better than false ones, and he has the true beliefs while theirs are false.

It would be quite wrong, then, to describe an atheist as a “non-believer”. He does not merely lack beliefs; he has many beliefs, among them that there is no God. It is not that the atheist is somehow shy of belief or afflicted with pathologically high standards for belief formation; he is not a skeptic, one who shuns belief. He is as much a believer as the theist; he just believes different things. It is not that there is a big hole in his belief system while the theist is bursting with robust beliefs; his beliefs are as numerous and sturdy as anyone’s—just different, that’s all. Indeed, the theist is as much a “non-believer’ as the atheist is, since the theist does not believe that there is no God, thus failing to possess a belief possessed by the atheist. And, of course, the atheist has many substantive beliefs that go along with his atheism, concerning the origin of the universe, life, the nature of morality, mortality, etc. Only from the point of the theist is he describable as a “non-believer”; from his own point of view, he believes in a great many things. From the atheist’s perspective, the theist is as much a non-believer as he is commonly taken to be, since the theist fails to hold many of his atheistic beliefs. The atheist is a red-blooded believer, indeed a confident (purported) knower.

To many observers the atheist as thus described is an arrogant and unreasonable figure. He takes himself to be entitled to various beliefs and attitudes to which he is simply not entitled. He does not know what he so confidently takes himself to know. He has overstepped the epistemic mark. He is a dogmatist, an atheistic fundamentalist, as unreasonable as the most unflinching religionist. He claims knowledge where none can be had. Agnosticism is the only reasonable position, if theism is to be rejected; atheism is intellectually irresponsible. How can anyone know that there is no God—any more than we can know that there is a God? These matters are simply beyond human knowledge, it will be said, areas of deep and irremediable ignorance.

I count myself an atheist in the strong sense outlined--so am I guilty of going out on an epistemic limb, of claiming to know what cannot be known? Am I being unreasonable? I don’t think I am, because there are many propositions affirming the nonexistence of things that most sensible people unhesitatingly accept. Take Santa Claus: what is your state of belief about him? Presumably you do not believe that he exists; but are you an agnostic about his existence? Do you think it is unreasonable—scandalous even--to believe that Santa Claus does not exist? I doubt it. You actively disbelieve in the existence of a tubby ageless pink-faced man with a white beard and red clothes who lives in the north pole making toys for children and who periodically mounts a sleigh to fly through the air powered by superfast reindeer in order to distribute these toys to children who have been good. If some epistemic stickler were to insist that only agnosticism is rational here, you would think him a bit nutty (“How can you be so certain there is no Santa Claus? Such certainty is beyond human epistemic powers!”). The reason is that you take yourself to have many good reasons to doubt that Santa exists: the story is made up to please gullible little children; searches of the north pole have not revealed the tubby philanthropist in question; it is preposterous to suppose that he could fly through the air with gravity-defying reindeer; he leaves no trace of his alleged journeys; parents have been known to purchase the gifts attributed to Santa’s generosity. These are all solid reasons to believe the negative existential: “Santa Claus does not exist”. Do they amount to cast-iron Cartesian certainty? No, but then nor do the vast majority of our beliefs; and this one seems no worse than, say, the belief that the earth orbits the sun or that Barack Obama exists. We are not certain in a skepticism-proof way of many things, but that doesn’t imply that we don’t have good reasons for our beliefs—including beliefs that certain things that some people think exist (in this case, little kids) do not. Quite simply, we know there is no such person as Santa Claus. Here is another example: I tell you that there is a dragon in the room next to you, eight feet tall and breathing fire, called “Draggy”. You express doubt, because you can’t see anything dragon-like in the vicinity. I tell you that it isn’t visible—or audible, touchable, or smellable. Draggy is a very special kind of dragon, completely undetectable by the human senses or any other device; yet he exists. I then challenge you to disprove my claim. I insist that if you won’t take my word for it then at least admit that you are agnostic on the question of Draggy’s existence—since you can’t prove he doesn’t exist. You might reply that I have defined Draggy in a very convenient way, so that no sensory evidence could possibly be given for or against his existence. The existential claim is totally unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Should you then be an agnostic about Draggy? That seems unduly cautious: it is more reasonable to suppose that I am playing a game with you, perhaps in order to scare you (I might go on to assert that when it thunders outside that is Draggy being petulant). You would be well within your rights to say to me: “Rubbish, you are making this sh** up; I totally disbelieve in the existence of your dubious Draggy or whatever you want to call it”. I might then go on to remind you of Descartes, dreams, brains in vats, the difficulty of obtaining absolute certainty; but you would rightly not be impressed by such flimflam. People cannot just go around positing peculiar entities and expect you either to believe that they exist or admit that you don’t know one way or the other.

Let me distinguish reasonable from excessive agnosticism. Reasonable agnosticism applies to cases where the evidence for and against a proposition is pretty evenly balanced. There are many such cases: Should we maintain a military presence in Afghanistan? Is there such a thing as dark matter? Was the moon ever part of the earth? Excessive agnosticism is the view that we should never commit ourselves as to the truth of a proposition. It is the natural response to various forms of extreme philosophical skepticism. What I am pointing out is that opponents of atheism practice selective excessive agnosticism: they insist on a skeptic’s standard of evidence when it comes to the proposition that God does not exist. They accept that other negative existentials can be known to be true—as that Santa and Draggy do not exist—but they deny that the atheist negative existential can be known to be true. My position is that both are in the same boat: that is, it is as reasonable to be an atheist as it is to be a disbeliever in Santa or Draggy. There is nothing inherently irrational in denying the existence of God, any more than it is inherently irrational to deny the existence of those other things. To suppose otherwise is to be what we might call a dogmatic agnostic—one who refuses on principle to disbelieve no matter how good the evidence for disbelief is.

And now the question becomes what the reasons actually are to deny that God exists. Here I shall be brief, because this is well-trodden ground. In the first place, I do not think there is any evidence in favor of God’s existence (by “God” I shall mean a supernatural being with some personal characteristics who created the universe and is interested in the fate of sentient beings such as ourselves). No observable fact about the universe points towards God as its most plausible explanation, e.g. the intricate design of organisms. There is no good evidence of miracles on the part of specially endowed human beings or emanating from Beyond. The idea of a disembodied being with infinite causal powers existing imperceptibly is contrary to reason. The traditional story of such a being is better explained by certain human needs and superstitions instead of by the actual existence of such a being. It is never reasonable to believe in the existence of something simply because of human testimony, when no other evidence has ever been forthcoming. The traditional so-called proofs of God’s existence—the first-cause argument, the ontological argument, the argument from design—do not hold water. In sum: there is simply nothing out there that amounts to a decent reason to assert that there is a God. As to arguments against, there is the standard problem of evil, as well as the more general problem of making sense of a being having all the qualities said to be possessed by God (e.g. how can God be truly omnipotent granted he is a necessary being—for couldn’t he act so as to extinguish himself, thereby showing his contingency?). There is really no more reason to believe in the God I have defined than in the Greek gods or other beings of myth and legend.

The theist may think I am being hasty and unfair. These are profound questions, she will say, not to be quickly decided. I agree that the considerations just adduced need to be thought through carefully (and I take myself to have done this work over the years), but the point that needs to be made here is that the theist is actually as hasty and unfair as she says I am. For every theist is also an atheist. That is, every believer in one god is a disbeliever in another. Believers in the Christian God disbelieve in the vengeful, jealous and capricious God of the Old Testament, as well as in the Hindu gods or the Greek gods or the nature gods of “primitive” tribes or any number of other “false gods”. People believe in the reality of their own God but they are not similarly credulous when it comes to other people’s gods—here their disbelief is patent and powerful. They do not preach agnosticism about those other gods; they reject them outright. I am with them on this point, but I extend it to their God too. My point is that they are as “dogmatic” as I am in their atheism; we are just atheists about different gods. I am an atheist about all gods; typical theists are atheists about the majority of gods believed in over the centuries by human beings of one tribe or another. I find their disbelief thoroughly sensible; I would merely urge them to push it one stage further. I favor total atheism; they favor selective atheism--none of that pusillanimous agnosticism for either of us. So please, theist, do not accuse me of epistemic irresponsibility in my atheism.

There used to be a big issue about monotheism and polytheism. Asserting the existence of only one god flew in the face of the beliefs of the polytheistic majority. No doubt the polytheists felt disrespected, and they wondered how the monotheists could be so sure that all those gods of old were mere fancy, poor non-existent beings, destined for the scrap heap of history. Some of the gods denied had ancient names, fervid followers, temples devoted to them, priests specializing in their doings—and the disbelieving monotheists wanted to abandon all of that in favor of their pinched unitary deity. The new monotheists were the atheists of their day, except that they retained a single divine being alone (hoping for a reductio the polytheists asked why, if they were ready to abandon nearly all the gods, they didn’t go the whole way). Perhaps the polytheists urged a more cautious agnosticism on the monotheists with regard to the spurned deities; they rejected the offer, preferring outright disbelief. My state of belief mirrors theirs, except that I affirm zero gods instead of one. (In fact, the idea of many gods has its advantages over the one-god theory: it comports with the complexity of the world and it promotes tolerance.) Yahweh, Baal, Hadad, and Yam: which of these ancient gods do you believe in and which do you think fictitious? I believe in none of them, nor in any others that might be mentioned; if you believe in one of them and disbelieve in the others, then you are just like me with respect to those others. Atheism is not confined to atheists, and the epistemology is the same no matter which gods you disbelieve in.

I say I am an atheist, and that is true. But the label is misleading in that it characterizes me from the perspective of a theist: I am a rejecter of theism (why can’t I describe theists as rejecters of atheism, thus privileging my own position?). This gives the impression that I go around rejecting theism, that I am preoccupied with that activity, that I wake up each day and celebrate my denial of God’s existence. According to this picture, I am an atheist in the same way I am a philosopher or a tennis player or hold certain moral views—these being traits of mine that define my “identity”. But really I am atheist in the same way typical monotheists are a-polytheist: it’s not something you think about, aside from the constant buzz of people asserting the opposite. Since there are no noisy polytheists left, monotheists don’t need to occupy themselves with combating polytheism; nor is this something they fret about and ponder on a daily basis. They are beyond polytheism. To be a theist who is labeled an a-polytheist would be an odd mode of description today--true but hardly central, significant. You could be an a-polytheist and scarcely have given the topic a moment’s thought; it is simply a logical implication of your assumed monotheism. For me to be called an atheist feels similarly weird, as if I am defined by one of disbeliefs (I’m also an a-scientologist, an a-Santa-ist, an a-werewolf-ist, etc). If theists were in the minority, and quieter, I doubt that the term “atheist” would be much used; and if that minority were very small, theists might be called “a-naturalists” or some such thing. I am defined as an atheist only in a certain social context. I used to be a serious engaged atheist, when I was thinking systematically and passionately about religion, some forty years ago—when I was in the heated process of rejecting religious claims. But since then my atheism has become merely reactive; where once the larva was hot, now it is cool. I used to believe in ghosts and goblins too, as well as Santa, but once the process of rejecting these entities was over my state of belief became one mainly of indifference. It would be odd, though literally true, to describe me as someone who disbelieves in ghosts, goblins and Santa—as if this were what my thought processes were all about. I am beyond these things—as I assume you are too. And that is my actual position with respect to God: I am post-theist—or I would be if I were not placed in a social context in which I need to defend my settled beliefs (hence this essay). I no longer debate the issue with myself or wonder whether I might be making a serious mistake (though I concede, as a good fallibilist, that it is logically possible that I am wrong—as it is about almost everything I believe). So my state of belief is not that of one continuously denying the existence of God, with an active belief that there is no such entity (though it is true that I am more often in this state than I would be the issue were not constantly debated around me). I am, dispositionally at any rate, in a state of implicit disbelief with respect to God—as I am in a state of implicit disbelief about ghosts, goblins and Santa. I simply take it for granted that there is no God, instead of constantly asserting it to myself. The state of mind I am in while composing this essay is not then my habitual state of mind, and even to be explicitly denying the existence of God strikes me as taking the issue a little too seriously—as it would be to write an essay making explicit my negative implicit beliefs about Santa Claus. So I am really as much post-atheist as post-theist, when it comes to my natural state of mind—just as I suppose most people are post-a-polytheist as well as post-polytheist. Polytheism, for most people, is simply a dead issue, not a subject of active concern. Theism for me is a dead issue, which is why it is misleading to call me an atheist--though it is of course strictly true that I am. It is misleading in just the way it is misleading to speak of a traditional Christian as an a-polytheist or a normal adult as an a-Santa-ist, since it suggests are far more active engagement with the issue than is the case. Many other difficult issues engage my mind and remain unresolved or at least open to serious question, but not my disbelief in God.

I have also reached the point (I reached it long ago) that the issue of God’s existence no longer strikes me as an interesting issue. I mean, when it comes up I tend to glaze over, because all the moves are so familiar and the debate seems so antiquated. I find it hard to get fired up about it. It just seems dull. No intellectual sparks fly off it. The question has important political and cultural significance, to be sure, but as an intellectual issue in its own right it lacks vitality. By contrast, my belief in ethical objectivism, or in natural mysteries, or in conceptual analysis, seems relevant and alive—as does my rejection of the contrary positions. My rejection of theism is more like my rejection of monarchy as a good political system—a bit of a yawn. When I was young I saw through both ideas and have found no reason over the decades to question my earlier conclusions, so the belief is like an old relative I take for granted rather than a lively new acquaintance (I am by no means in love with atheism, as I am with other intellectual ideas). The thrill of atheism has gone, along with fear of it; now it is just an uninteresting fact about me, hardly worth mentioning.

Do I then advocate abandoning all talk of God and his works? I think there is no such thing as God in reality, so do I also think that discourse about God has no useful role? It may shock some of my atheist comrades but I don’t advocate the abolition of God-talk. What I think is that God is (or can be or become) a useful fiction, so his name can play a role even though it has no existent bearer. For many people Satan has already gone that way: they don’t believe in his literal existence but they find it useful to retain the concept and its associated language and ideology. Satan is, or has become, a useful fiction, his name a fruitful source of ideas and emotions, especially when it comes to describing the deeply evil. Imagine a community of intelligent beings who have never believed in God or anything supernatural or even considered the question of whether such beings might exist; they are constitutionally secular. They do, however, enjoy works of fiction, so they are familiar with the notion of a fictional character; they are clear that such characters do not exist but are merely conjured up by creative writers. One day a writer publishes a novel with a radically new theme: a supernatural being who created the universe, cares about us, ensures our survival after death, rewards the virtuous and punishes the wicked—called “Gud”. The book is offered as a work of pure fiction and is taken to be so by its eager readers. It becomes a bestseller, a publishing phenomenon. People speak constantly of Gud and his works, enjoying the fiction woven around this supernatural character. The story supplies something in their imaginative life hitherto missing (rather as some of Shakespeare’s characters seem to do so). No one, however, is tempted to think the story is factually true. They start saying Gud-related things to each other, like “Gud wouldn’t think much of that” or “It would take Gud to pull that off” or “By Gud, you’re beautiful”. They find such remarks amusing, maybe enlightening—though they are consciously interpreted as purely fictional (compare “Only Sherlock Holmes could have solved that crime”). In this way the God concept enters their thought and discourse, but never in such a way as to make a factual claim; it is all just harmless make-believe. I have no objection to any of this: our hypothetical community is a community of atheists who find talk of Gud useful and amusing. A fictional supernatural being plays a role in their imagination but is not taken to be a genuine constituent of reality. They are careful, say, to instruct their children that this is just a story not a piece of sober metaphysics or science. Well, I think God could play just such a role for us. We simply cease to take talk of God literally, consigning him to the category of useful fictions. He already plays that role for many of us, because atheists do not all abjure the word “God” (“I wish to God people didn’t believe in things like…God”). In fact it is plausible to conjecture that back in man’s prehistory, before the distinction between myth and fact has become clear, talk of the gods belonged to seamless mode of speech in which people were none too fussy about which parts they thought corresponded to objective reality and which parts were projections of the imagination. Then god talk became hardened into literal assertion and you had to decide whether you thought the gods were myth or reality; heretofore people were pleasantly hazy about that distinction. I don’t advocate a reversion to such haziness; I just think it was a mistake to put the gods on the reality side instead of the useful fiction side. Let us then put them clearly on the fictional side where they belong; we can then talk about them all we want, so long as we know what we are doing. Presumably churches and other forms of worship will then disappear, at least as we know them—though worship of known-to-be-fictional characters is not unprecedented. Religion as we have it will certainly not survive the reorientation I am suggesting, though a good deal of its conceptual core might (only now interpreted fictionally). People will no longer believe in God but they will make-believe in him. This strikes me as quite an attractive world to live in. Stories can, after all, be good—artistically, morally—without being true—factually. There is no God, but the story of him has its attractions as a work of art (at least some of it does; not all of the God fiction is that useful). Living in that world my state of belief with regard to God might include a good deal of make-believe in him, combined with adamant disbelief in his reality. My imaginative life already involves a lot of make-believe in relation to fictional characters, none of it confused with belief proper; I see no reason why I couldn’t extend this attitude towards God, at least once other people stopped literally believing in him. I might then extract what is good in the concept, while discarding the metaphysical baggage. Religious language would then be more of a fun fiction than a cruel hoax, a kind of game.

This is a wonderfully comprehensive piece. It has just one awkward typo: you probably meant "lava" instead of "larva". Mind you, the image of "where once the larva was hot" is rather vivid - a wriggling tadpole or caterpillar, slightly singed....

Dear Colin McGinn: You are one of my favorite philosophers. Thank you for your writing and blog!

Is it reasonable to say: the appropriate coefficient of uncertainty or doubt or acknowledgement of "noumenality" about the source/meaning/purpose or lack thereof within the universe that is appropriate is not something we are in a position to confidently gauge? Yes, all the epistemically reliable information we have gives us no evidence of God, but, relative to the question, say, of the "origins" of the Big Bang, or what "preceded" it; and so on -- might we not be like cats trying to do algebra? How confident should we be in the capacity of human intelligence to answer the question? Do you allow no uncertainty into your denial of purpose "behind" or "within" the universe (separate from the purpose that is manifest in creatures that are biologically organized so as to have consciousness)?

Or to bring it closer to home, why are you not a mysterian in questions of metaphysical or theistic ultimacy, as you are about the possibility of humans successfully conceiving relations between the material world and consciousness? I find the latter less fraught with epistemic difficulty than the former. If humans might never master the admittedly hugely daunting task of conceptualizing the relation between consciousness and matter, might we also never master the even greater task of ascertaining any origins/purpose etc. within the universe?

The Santa Claus/dragon talk is wildly disanalogous -- the question of the source or cause of everything cannot be analogized to the nonexistence of fantasized creatures within our narrow domain on earth because it is at least conceivable that if there were an organized, focused, deeply powerful, force in some way guiding the universe, it is also conceivable that humans would be unable to detect it. This offers a plausible wedge into an active atheistic claim to knowledge. Your discussion is too disjunctive -- too atheist/agnostic/theist etc... How about this: Yes I have no reason to believe the universe is as a whole "about" anything; or that it makes much sense even to speak of the universe as a whole as the sort of thing that could be "about" anything. But I do acknowledge on different days, a 2% or 8% or 12% level of uncertainty in my conception of the universe because I don't have any way of ascertaining the degree of appropriate epistemic confidence I should have about such a huge question. I can ascertain epistemic confidence -- 100%! -- about Santa Claus and dragons. The 2 are not comparable.

We need a continuum of non-theists with 100% degree of epistemic confidence found in total atheists; to, say, maybe 96% epistemic confidence in God's nonexistence in someone like me, to maybe 50% in "vanilla" agnostics. It's not that I'm an agnostic who could go either way on the issue and thinks there are no grounds for theistic belief in either direction; it's that I see no epistemic grounds for believing in God, but have only 96% (or whatever) confidence in any human epistemology in addressing the question. Might you be arrogating knowledge about the universe you don't really have?

Cheers,
Timothy Beneke

Dear Colin,

I must say that I agree with Timothy that your "Draggy" analogy is a bit unfair to all believers, as there is exactly one thing in favour of calling Draggy existent, your opinion, to be precise. Still it is cute.

As to Agnosticism: there is indeed no way of being "dead sure" that there is a God, the same holds true for its opposite, and I appreciate the way you call your atheism a "belief" that only comes near to knowledge, but isn´t knowledge itself. What´s so hard to swallow about atheists sometimes is that they think their opinion is obvious and simply true - quite in the same way medieval philosophers were concinced God existed without doubt.

Let´s try something new (or is it?): There is such a thing as beauty, no?
Not just people, images, music you can apply the word "beautiful" to.

Now we have the word "good" in the ethical sense, which you may apply to persons or perhaps also organizations.
Now "summum bonum", Latin for "the highest goodness", is used as synonym for God, as far as I remember.

"Goodness me", you will exclaim.

Designers, advertixement men and women and (mostly) are very much after this "Beauty".
They dont pray to it, true. But still.

Believers, Priests and Theologists are after God - not that they always have found Him whenever they use His name to back up their own words.

Cheerio!

Hello Colin,

First, in case you do not care to read too much further, and who could blame you, I hope you will continue to write to this blog which I have only just found. Even if you feel you aren't able to write anything too original for fear of being plagiarized it would still be interesting to hear about tennis - or whatever you feel you can write about - not because I am a particular fan of tennis but because I am interested in how a great mind thinks even when it might be cruising (I was going to say idling but that could be construed as having negative connotations which is not my intention). Indeed, if the thoughts are not fully developed it is still a fascinating window into the process of thought for those of us who are nowhere near as advanced in cerebral gymnastics as yourself.

I'd like to comment on one aspect of your essay about atheism.
I'll try to be brief but it's very difficult.

You say you believe that there is no God with the same conviction that you believe the earth is round. Well, you said that's what an atheist believes and later you say that you are a strong atheist, so I infer that it is indeed what you believe. I could come up with any number of tests to show that the world was round. I could enact these tests, and I'll bet you that they would all show that the world was in fact an oblate spheroid (near enough to being round). I cant really come up with any tests to show that God exists, except perhaps prayer and God might choose not to answer my prayers which would not prove that he does not exist. So I can't say that I don't believe that God exists (and I don't) with the same level of certainty that I believe the world is round. Perhaps I missed something in your argument.

Considering my levels of belief in the existence of Draggy and Santa and God, well, sure I don't believe in any of them with probably equal conviction. That's because we've given them all an identity. I know who Draggy is because you told me. I know who Santa is from tradition and I know who God is because you gave him a name (and I just gave him a gender but that was probably a mistake) and that name imprints an identity which probably is unavoidable because of the culture in which the reader was brought up. We have an idea of what we think is meant by God. The idea conjured by the word "God" may also imply a personality or particular qualities. We keep using that name, because it's convenient shorthand, instead of inserting everywhere "divinity" or "god-like entity" or some other more impersonal alternative. We've already decided who we are talking about even though we might not know what we are talking about and that capital "G" doesn't help.

I am assuming that the "God" you refer to is the omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent god that philosophers talk about when they consider the problem of evil. I don't believe in that god for reasons of rationality. I also don't believe in a god called "Allah" or "Yahweh" or "Jesus" but I don't believe that has exhausted the possibility of what "God" might be. I can envisage a god who might not be omnibenevolent. That seems the easiest quality to dispense with although it is perhaps the quality that believers crave the most. Considering that 90% of all species are already extinct and it's taken 4.5 billion years to get this far, you might make a case for saying God's a bit of a bumbler and therefore not omniscient. You might posit that perhaps God has complete dominion over the Universe that he created but not over the realm he exists in, in which case, he is not omnipotent. I could say that I believe in causation and that in this universe matter and energy can not be created and yet they exist. I at least require an explanation for what "caused" the matter and energy of the universe and perhaps I could give that explanation the name "God". The problem is, I do not know who or what God is, if anything at all, and for that reason I can not say that I don't believe in God with the same conviction that I have that the world is round.

Best Regards

Richard Dawkins in The God Hypothesis (Chapter 2) of The God Delusion considers himself to be 6.5 out of 7 (93%) Atheist where 4 out of 7 would be a completely impartial Agnostic. On the 7 scale I'd put myself a 7/7 a-santaist and a 6.99 atheist. There are not many of my beliefs that I rate 7 out of 7 because I'm a falibilist and a scientist. In my poll "What is the probability that the idea of God or gods are just the product of the human imagination?" http://hassers.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-is-probability-that-idea-of-god-or.html an equal number rated their belief at 100% as did at 99.9%. For all practical purposes I neither believe in Santa or a monotheistic God or any polytheistic gods.

to all people who are striving at mutual understanding between natural science and a reasonable belief in God: in "www.stephanscom.at" I found an article from august 25th 2006 by cardinal Schönborn, a man of the church (needless to say) that cites Nietzsche approvingly - though not, of course, with his sentence that "God is dead".
(Benedict 16. did a very similar thing in his recent encyclica on Love, by the way)
His is a third position beside creationism and evolution plain.

Know the oldish joke? A revolutionary, enraged with his fate, takes a colour spray and writes down the following words on the church´s outer wall : GOD IS DEAD .
A few weeks later busy parishioners heve cleaned the sentence away.

He does not relent but writes again, bigger: "GOD IS DEAD" NIETZSCHE

A few days later he is glad still to find it there, but he is sad to see someone has added another short sentence below: "NIETZSCHE IS DEAD:" GOD:

"Always those silly busybodies that think they are God or even greater still.." he mutters to himself.

Since I wrote the above comment, I have watched a youtube video of Lawrence Krauss talking about how the universe came from nothing ('A Universe from Nothing' if anyone wants to reference it) which was nothing (no pun) short of a revelation for me in that it explains how the universe could effectively pop into existence due to quantum fluctuation. I therefore no longer require an explanation according to the known laws of the universe why there is energy and matter in existence. He also explains that the sum of energy/matter is zero so no conservation laws have been broken. I am sure this is familiar ground to many readers here but it was news to me, as they say. I therefore would withdraw the penultimate sentence of what I wrote above if I was writing that blog entry today. Of course the question of why there is quantum fluctuation instead of a real state of nothingness still exists.

Having said that does it eliminate any vestige of doubt for me that God might exist? No, but what it does is remove a possible reason for me believing that God or something beyond what we know *needs* to exist. He goes on to explain how the destiny of the universe is to expand at ever increasing velocity until space itself is expanding faster than the speed of light at which point observers will not be able to see beyond their own galaxy or detect the cosmic background radiation. So a civilization that is developing at that time and asking the cosmological questions that we are asking today will think that their galaxy is the only one that exists and will have no possibility of knowing about the big bang. This lead me to think what possible things might be hidden from us because of where we are in the continuum of the universe's history. Is it possible that we are somehow similarly sensorally deprived of being able to detect something before/outside the big bang or the existence of other universes or other traces of a possible higher level or earlier level of the universe/multiverse that might otherwise have been detectable to us?

Now the more we know about things the weirder it gets. Getting your head around the dual wave/particle nature of light (and everything) or results in quantum mechanics whereby cats in boxes can be simultaneously alive and dead or that the mere act of observing an event changes the outcome or that there is an effective speed limit to the universe and that as you approach that speed limit 'strange' things happen that dont happen (or detectably happen) at lower speeds. And we have known about some of that for a hundred years or more. Our minds seem hopelessly equipped to deal with these concepts and we are at a point where we seem to be able to represent things mathematically which most of us cant really conceptualize like extra dimensions present at the time of the big bang that are now absent or 'curled up' and I don't suppose it's going to get any easier as we delve further. So it seems to me that in trying to grapple with what reality is there is a limit of understanding that we have reached with our brains and are relying on mathematics to push further. Perhaps there is a limit of mathematics that will prevent us understanding or detecting deeper levels of the nature of things. The idea of a singularity in mathematics might be ok, but can it really occur in the universe (obviously I am exposing my level of ignorance in writing this)? But if there are such limits could the intricacy of the universe be beyond mathematics and human understanding and lie hidden like the big bang will be hidden from later civilizations? Our ability to understand the nature of the universe according to current knowledge is severely challenged for all but the most advanced scholars. Could the same be true of our ability to reason and therefore some philosophical concepts may always be beyond discovery?

Dear Nick,

as to your first paragraph - concerning \\\"quantum fluctuation\\\" - I am at a loss to understand how nothing can have any number of unit (f.i. 22 Ohm - Ohm is the unit, I am calling 22 the \\\"number\\\", which is probably wrong\\\") which could whith any probability fluctuate !! Before the \\\"Big Bang\\\" or whatever we may call it, there should additionally been an onlooker to objectify any change - if \\\"fluctuation\\\" is change.

I am thinking the natural scientists are playing a practical joke on us. Philosophically, given the laws of cause and effect, we must postulate a cause for the very first moment in the life of the universe.
There is virtually nothing to solve our logical puzzle, and scientists juggle our brains with all their abracadabra (which you enumerate ably in your last paragraph) until we believe them they may have found something.

\\\"May some philosophical concepts always be beyond disovery?\\\" you are asking. For my part, I strongly suspect the answer is yes, there are.
For could there be a moment where every philosophical puzzle is solved, every question solved, if only one person knew of these solutions even, what, in the name of I dont know what or who, should ever follow?

additionally, as to God: I think, many as there have tried to explain the way the world works, like for instance Schopenhauer in "die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung", it was much criticized Leibnitz that hit on the truth: the one big wonder is how there comes to be communication, communication in time, movement and so on, given that there are individuals whith each their own will and views. Had they all the same view, there would be no conflict and, hence, no movement. (This sounds more like Heraklit...)
The Monads need God as a Medium to communicate in, or, as Freud would have it, only the projedtions of our own "problems" make it possible that we "wahrnehmen" the surroundings at all. Here, I give an important role to sleep and dreams, who "start" us in a way that it is possible that we take interest in the surrounding intensely boring different objects of matter.
In our Fellowmen we find the mirrors of our own selves and so, to a lesser degree, in animals.

Sweetie, you need to paragraph more for the web.

There is some heated discussion on reddit about Colin's entry.

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/awh0u/why_i_am_an_atheist_by_colin_mcginn/c0jr86e

Dear Nick Rees,

I found a backing for your first assumption here in the Bible itself: "Ich bin der Herr ... der ich Licht mache und schaffe die Finsternis, der ich Frieden gebe und schaffe Unheil", chapter 45, verse 7, Book Jesaja, Old Testament.

Shall I translate or will you get a bible? the text is in the internet also in various translations.

Sorry, your texts are so long I didn´t read them through thoroughly at first.

Isiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

I said that I can't believe in Yahweh so this doesnt change anything for me. I always had a problem with how chummy God and the devil seemed to be in the book of Job whereas Jesus sends the devil packing when he is in the wilderness. God created the devil but if it wasnt for the devil, Adam would not have eaten the forbidden fruit. So isnt God responsible for the fall of man? This being the case why even create the garden of Eden in the first place instead of just creating the earth as it is today? God is omniscient so he knew exactly what he was doing and what would happen.

For me if there is a God, it can't be an omniscient, omnipotent and all benevolent God. An evil God, or partly evil, or capricious, or indifferent God seems more probable if there has to be a God at all.

Thanks for the translation. I always found Jesaiah´s words so full of force.

As to the devil: the story that Lucifer is a fallen angel isnt in the Bible, but an "apokryphic" book not even included in the catholic Bible, which is a bit larger than Luther`s.

I already wanted to ask: do you believe there are mysteries in the world - or in today´s physics - or is everything just riddles, such one is able to solve and such one isn´t?

An indifferent God makes no sense to me personally, as this world surely needs checking up more than often.

I dont like to talk about the devil. Is he good in your imagination, as you imagine God as "parly evil"?

The "evil" in jesajah may have to do with punishment of His people and revenge on the enemies - it is partly a local God, partly, as I read a short while ago, the God of a shepard changing place often and, thence, everywhere.

Olivier: send me another email--I lost the one you sent. Colin

If any of you is curious by now to read the "Word of the Lord" (which is a better investment than Dawkins) and form an opinion on it, of the "Old Testament" I recommend the "Song of Songs", the Book "Job "(also spelt "Hiob") and, above all, the "Psalms", which include prayers for help against enemies, prayers of lament and thankful prayers.

This is not the right blog for Bible recommendations.

I come across this here bloggin site last nite. I thinks all you all are wrong!
Ifin you need prufe that Jesus is reel and can save souls, just opun up the
pages of his holee writins! Them there words in the new testement explainen
all about what you need to get into heven!!

No matter what you book studyin, thinkin men talks about, Jesus is real
and walks with us everday! Just read the good book and that's all the evidents
you will ever need!

Walk with Jesus,
Jethro

Dear Colin,

I merely meant that it is good to know at least some basic things about the Holy Scriptures, as a matter of all-around-education, and, as always, that it is better not to rely on second-hand information.

I did not want to misuse your blog.

Surely that was a parody from Jethro--and quite a good one!

Thank ye kindly Mr. Colin!

Hi Colin, thank you for your post. I share most of your beliefs, and consider myself agnostic or a "weak atheist" because based on all the facts I cannot believe in a traditional god in any sensible way.

However, I noticed you started flaming us agnostics out here:

"The atheist thus claims to know that theists and agnostics are epistemically defective—that they have false and unwarranted beliefs about the question of God’s existence."

I am agnostic and have a defensible position. I am not going to speak for all agnostics, but I don't believe my position is defective nor do I hold unwarranted beliefs. Like yourself I have consciously chosen my belief and it is not an apathetic position.

First and foremost, I do not believe in any gods, but also do not deny the possibility of the existence of gods, a conscious universe, future gods, godlike beings or other conceivable gods. There are too many gods, and too many definitions of gods out there to know what people are actually talking about. Who can honestly say "I have tested all 50,000,000 ideas of what people mean by the word GOD and have proven them all false"?

The actual truth on the matter is not based on personal opinion, but on actual fact, as well as probabilities, logic and definition.

For example, if a friend of ours told us that there was a "creator god" and it created all living entities on the planet, we both might say "hogwash!" until we realize that his definition of "creator god" is the first self replicating RNA from which sprung all living entities on the earth. To this we could both agree.

In this vein of thought, we could believe in many plausible gods.

Humanity itself could be considered a god of sorts -- collectively more intelligent and immortal than any individual. Humanity cares about hurricane and earthquake victims more than the biblical god. And Humanity is considered sacred and cherished by many people. Humanity even enacts its own social laws similar to the biblical god.

For others, God could mean "all the good things in the world" without trying to define god as more than a useful mental concept. I cannot disprove this kind of god.

If god is defined as a "super intelligent, immortal, powerful & benevolent being", many possibilities exist.

With all the stars in this universe, it is hard to believe that we are the only intelligent race in the universe. If there is another race out there that had only a fraction of a head start at evolution -- let's say their planet whirled into existence only 0.01% earlier than ours then they could be about 900,000 years ahead of us in terms of technology, genetics and science. If we met this race I don't know about you, but I would say "Oh my gods!" Could I not consider them a race of god-like beings in terms of intelligence, knowledge, power & immortality?

I can't even imagine how our own race would look in another 1000 years -- but compared to our present state I'm hoping we would be a peaceful god-like race by then (ie. intelligent, powerful, benevolent). So in some sense the word "god" might be a mirror of what we hope to become (ie. something better than what we are). God might be a fictional concept for now, but all inventions start as a fictional concept.

It is not unlikely that continued effort in the field of AI research will eventually yield an intelligence that surpasses our own. Perhaps we will invent a wise, peaceful and intelligent "AI" God within the next 50 - 100 years. This intelligence may even become a source of insight and salvation to our species. (Side note: I think people already google more than they pray nowadays. So will google become this "AI" God within the next 50 years? lol!)

With VR technology improving each year, it will not be too many more years before we can simulate this world exactly. Once we have done so, and VR worlds are prominent, an obvious question emerges: How do we know that the real world is not a simulation also? If a simulation, then is there a "programmer god" that is playing some kind of joke on us? I don't know.

I may never understand what causes consciousness, but if it has to do with the number of communicative connections in our brain, then consider this: The sheer number of stars and planets in our universe each emitting, bending, and bouncing communicative photons, could be considered a massive (albeit slow) super consciousness. Some people consider this to be a type of god. I can't disprove this idea.

To many people, science is a continually growing beacon of light amidst all the deception -- a god of truth.

I almost forgot to mention the placebo god: The one we know can't possibly exist, but we believe anyways, just so we can get the placebo health benefits. (I can prove this one doesn't exist)

There are many more definitions and ideas of gods, some humorous, some entertaining, some thought provoking. I find it humorous that I must deny every definition of god with one blanket statement just so that I can be considered "not defective" by people like yourself.

Are you saying the very "idea" of any sort of god is just a bad and false idea to begin with, no matter how useful or plausible the definition? Or are you saying the traditional Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist gods are non-existent?

I'm not just playing around with semantics here, because somewhere between the fact that the mainstream Judeo-Christian-Islamic god cannot possibly exist, and the fact that "a rock" is a useless definition for a god, there is room for all sorts of other possible gods that could be useful and even important.

We should be skeptical, but we should not completely turn our minds off to a concept before all evidence has been made known. If you think all evidence has been made known to you, then I applaud you, however, new facts, definitions, data and philosophies are being produced daily, so it seems unwise to give blanket statements about such a broad topic.

With so many diverse ideas, definitions, unknown facts and variables, as well as the fact that it is impossible to disprove all current and future definitions of god, I respectfully disagree with the atheist position.

I am agnostic.

Chris,
You've allowed the definition of "god" to become so incredibly loose (infinitely loose, actually) that the state of your belief is utterly meaningless.

I would have thought it was clear, Chris, that I was speaking about the gods of traditional religions, especially the Judeo-Christian god, when I opposed agnosticism about such gods. You seem to agree that atheism is correct with respect to such gods. The way you want to leave the word "god" as a place-holder for almost anything quite elevated or deep strikes me as simply producing a verbal disagreement; but surely the English word "god" does not permit the multiple meanings you place on it.

The topic of this discussion reminds me of a 1949 essay by Bertrand Russell called, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?" Russell's point is consistent with Prof. McGinn's, but it seems subtly different. I hope it's alright if I quote the main passage here. Russell sets it up by relating that he is often asked what his religion is:

"I never quite know whether I should say 'Agnostic' or whether I should say 'Atheist.' It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled about it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God.
"On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.
"None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such a proof.
"Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophic audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line." (Bertrand Russel on God and Religion, p. 85)

Excellent quotation from Russell--captures my position very well. But note that Russell had very high standards of proof, tantamount to immunity from Cartesian doubt. On a more realistic notion of proof, he might allow that those gods can be disproved. Can I disprove the hypothesis that the next piece of bread I eat will poison me?

In "What I believe" (1925), Russell writes:

"I do not pretend to be able to prove there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable then any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them"

He then says that he has discussed this in greater depth in "Philosophy of Leibniz", Chapter XV

I wonder if he was agnostic or atheistic about his own celestial teapot. He says that you and I can't disprove it, so we must be agnostic about it. But can he disprove it?
Just because he invented it in his mind, can he prove that it doesn't really exist?

He might have been supremely confident about this in 1952 before the first orbital space flight in 1957 but maybe not quite so confident by the time he died in 1970. With all the space junk floating around up there, who is to say there really isnt a teapot that got jettisoned from Apollo, the space station, Mir or the shuttle, with all the other trash they all have dumped, that hasnt found its way into a solar orbit between earth and Mars? Yes, yes, I know it's a piffling probability, but even so, aren't we dealing with piffling probabilities when we talk about atheism versus agnosticism.

By the way, I like the idea of a Judeo-Christian God. Aren't they mutually exclusive? It's either one thing or the other three, surely. But seriously, aren't the Judeo and Islamic Gods more equally aligned? Why don't we refer to the Judeo-Islamic God?

I sympathise & agree with Mr. McGinn's posting (11.01.10, 09:18 PM) and its conclusion: "My imaginative life already involves a lot of make-believe in relation to fictional characters, none of it confused with belief proper; I see no reason why I couldn’t extend this attitude towards God, etc.."

I also sympathise & agree with his skepsis about the possibility of scientifically solving the so called hard problem of consciousness. I think it's a black hole, sucking too much human & financial resources. As far as I'm concerned, the same holds for physics in so far as it seeks to find solutions to questions like where/when/how did the universe begin.
So here's my proposal for refreshing things. Being agnostic (in Russel's sense) is not good enough, the minimum is to be Hard Core Agnostic. My argument runs like this:

- The concept of beginning and/or ending (of life, the world, the universe) is a necessary, even an unavoidable conceptual device in our intellectual, artistic and social affairs.
- The device has its philosophical, religious, scientific and science-fictional forms: first mover, creator(s), big bang, ufo's of all sorts.
- None of us, (priest, philosopher, physicist or novelist) has a way of knowing if any of these concepts do or do not refer to anything else apart from other devices in our conceptual framework.
- QED: there's no way for deciding, apart from make-yourself-believe.

Let me recall McGinn's observation that the theist/atheist discussion is philosophically rather uninteresting (my words) because it's obvious: religious concepts about god are fiction all too often becoming a cruel hoax. The point I want to make is that the same goes for any version of the concept of beginning and/or ending, including the physicist's.

Cordiali saluti di Goffredo Smeets

It is interesting that so much of human thought about origins and ends has a mythological form, as if human thought finds it hard to go there; same for the question of the self or soul. We may never get much beyond myths about these things--fictions and make-believe. (The big bang doesn't really tells us the origins of the universe, since it was an event in the history of the universe.)

My guess is that the mythological form, which essentially is metaphoric, is the only way out for handling metaphysical issues like 'free will', 'self', or 'time'.
I'm not a physicist but I guess physicists make mythological manoeuvres in understanding the nature of 'time' as poets make scientific manoeuvres in singing their song.

Ciao Collin,

here's some more response to your thought provoking posting, including two questions.

B. Russell considers himself to be an agnostic, admittedly the only philosophically defendable stance. Nevertheless, he's prepared to introduce himself for 'the man in the street' as an atheist. That I understand as communicative tactics.
In your posting you 'identify' yourself as an atheist, as someone who "...doesn’t merely lack belief in a divinity; he positively believes in the absence of a divinity."
First question: Is that also tactics or is it philosophy?

To my taste & understanding, for a philosopher it's one step too far to deviate from the agnostic stance in either direction, theistic or atheistic. I don't see why or how a philosopher should belief anything, apart from the possibility of getting his thoughts better organised. Don't get me wrong, there's no irony intended here. What I don't get is your 'rationale' of deciding for the agnostic stance and in the same breath presenting yourself as an atheist, a believer in the absence of something other people say they belief in. Which makes me think of the schoolboy's essay on The Vacuum.

"A vacuum is a nothing. We only mention it to let it be known that we know it exists."

Second question: did the schoolboy overlook something?

Cordiali saluti.

There is a type of philosopher who advocates agnosticism about everything--we are never entitled to any belief. That is the Pyrronian skeptic. But this is not a realistic view of belief: we should believe in science not superstition, fact not fantasy, people not fairies. And there are reasons to be cited in all these cases. God is like that: why be an agnostic when reason and evidence favors atheism? As I pointed out, even the most devout theist is an atheist--about the gods she doesn't accept.

I think any rational person will admit he is agnostic about the ultimate reality of existence. The same rational person, though, is certainly justified in rejecting any groundless claim made about the ultimate reality of existence. You don't need to have knowledge of ultimate reality to know that there is no valid evidence for a particular claim about it. So I think a rational person can be an agnostic about ultimate reality while being a positive disbeliever in any ungrounded belief whatever, including theism.

Collin, thank you for your answer.
It inspired me to clean up an abandoned corner.
The result is that I remain agnostic, remain a believer in fact/people/science and have became an atheist.
I'll raise my glass to that.

Cordiali saluti

Another point: Goffredo speaks of Russell's "communicative tactics," but I think the reason Russell and many others who have reflected on the matter have dissociated themselves from the term "agnostic" is that, not only is it reasonable to positively disbelieve any unjustified claim, but that some unjustified claims inflict a great deal of harm and therefore one has a moral responsibility to make oneself clear.

While I don't think you can justify making the positive claim that there exists no god, I think it is entirely reasonable to positively reject any unjustified claim. If the claim in question is theism, then "agnosticism" is not an accurate word for this state of rejection. The appropriate word is "atheism."

I believe agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive since the former relates to knowledge and the latter relates to belief. One can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist and I think most people would fall into one of these categories since no-one can reasonably claim to know that God does not exist (if you feel you can, please show us your proof) and not many can claim to know that God exists except by personal experience so the number of gnostic theists is small and the number of gnostic atheists is very small.
The term agnostic is not particularly useful because it doesn't really say very much since there are very few things we know with absolute certainty so we end up with a fuzzy notion of what we can 'know' to be true without requiring absolute certainty and this will vary from person to person.
I believe the term agnosticism has evolved in meaning since it was coined by Thomas Huxley. I believe it originally had a much broader meaning covering more than just the existence of a deity including to question the nature of reality as Mike was using it above. (sorry I cant find a reference for this)

In terms of the popular meaning of agnosticism many people believe it to mean the state of neither belief nor non-belief, in other words, if you ask the question 'Do you believe in God?', many people believe that the agnostic is the one who responds with 'Don't Know', rather than 'Yes' or 'No'. Of course not knowing whether you believe in God is different to not knowing if God exists. I think that is why Russell said he was an atheist or agnostic depending on who he was speaking to.

In summary, I believe that the meaning of agnosticism is neither precise (since its meaning has changed over time and appears to mean different things to different people), nor especially descriptive since most things can not be known with absolute certainty. I think it would be better to refrain from using the term in most contexts.

Rather than use the term agnostic about myself I would prefer the term ignostic which requires that the concept of God be defined before existence or non-existence can be discussed.

Therefore I can say I am strongly atheistic or positively atheistic about Yahweh, Allah, the Trinity, Zeus, Krishna etc.

But I am negatively atheistic about the existence of a deity of any kind.

Of course your celebrity atheists such as Dawkins and Hitchens like to go a bit further than the description 'atheist' and have latched onto anti-theist as being somebody opposed to theism, Hitchens prefers the term antitheist over atheist to describe himself. I think an antitheist is implicitly an atheist ( but if you can have a self-loathing Jew, could you have a self-loathing theist that was an antitheist? :-) ). From what little I know about him, and mostly from reading "Why I am not a Christian", I believe Russell would also have fallen into the category of antitheist.

But Nick: Do you also think it's unreasonable to disbelieve in unicorns? (Where's the "proof" that there are no unicorns?) Also: what about the problem of evil--isn't that a proof?

I don't think your comments add clarity to the situation, Nick. The only way you could have an "agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist" is in practice, not belief. For example you could go to church every Sunday while admitting you don't know whether there is really a god. But the discussion here is about belief, not practice. As Prof. McGinn says in the first paragraph of his essay, "to believe that p is to take oneself to know that p." Also, it isn't helpful to muddle the meaning of "agnostic" with a discussion of historical contingencies. If you have a clear conception of what it means to know, then you should clearly conceive what it means to not know.

Your later comment with the word "ignostic" actually touches on an issue I was trying to overcome with my amateurish formulation above. I agree with Prof. McGinn's essay, but one problem I have with it is that the argument hinges on a particular definition of God, which he provides in parentheses near the top of paragraph six. It's a reasonable definition which I think accurately reflects the professed beliefs of the vast majority of practicing monotheists. But I've noticed that anytime there's a debate, the theists will accuse the atheists of setting up a straw man. They'll say your definition of god is not their definition, and if you press them to provide one they'll start muttering something about an ineffable source or essence of being. Like prairie dogs running to their hole at the first sign of danger, clever theists will retreat to a vague, apophatic theology, but when the coast is clear (when there are no atheists around to question them) they'll come out of their hole and recite the Apostle's Creed.

What I was attempting to do above was to make a more general formulation that would hold up in any debate, with any definition of god. The onus of proof is distributed fairly on both sides: If you claim there is a god, you must provide evidence; If I claim that your claim is groundless, I must demonstrate that. An atheist defined this way (as a rejector of theistic claims) does not need to make any epistemically dubious claims ("There is no Zeus or Poseidon.") to justify his state of positive disbelief.

Prof. McGinn: Doesn't the problem of evil only disprove the existence of an all-powerful and all-good god? A deist (and perhaps even a fire-and-brimstone Old Testament preacher) could get around this problem by disputing the definition.

Colin,Yes, the problem of evil is, for me, a proof that an omniscient, ominpotent, and all benevolent God does does not exist. But it does not rule out all the other possible gods that fall short on at least one of these qualities. I think I mentioned this elsewhere in your blog. The easiest quality to dispense with would seem to be omnibenevolence. In fact, I don't think that Yahweh is an all benevolent God to my way of thinking so the problem of evil is not proof that Yahweh does not exist. However, I disbelieve in Yahweh on other grounds. I am an agnostic ayahwehist.

Unicorns are a bit more tricky.

So what do we mean by unicorns? I am not assuming any particular magical quality
, If we mean your classic, modern unicorn - a white, horse-like animal with a single horn - it is not a stretch for me to believe that such animals *could* have existed and are now extinct like the Great Auk, the Dodo and perhaps the Tasmanian Tiger. Or perhaps they are not extinct and exist somewhere very remotely like perhaps the Tasmanian Tiger may still exist, although there is no requirement that they should exist currently for me to believe in them because I believe in dinosaurs which no longer exist. Unicorns do not come from Greek mythology but rather from Greek writers of natural history as well as being mentioned in biblical texts, so it seems they could be based on something else that we know today or an extinct species, perhaps something similar to the Oryx. It seems that the classic notion of the unicorn that we think of today evolved in Medieval times but it was based on the classical and biblical texts.

Now, if I see an old painting of Jesus, it will invariably be of a very light-skinned man with a beard and white robes. Now I could say "Well, Jesus was from the Middle-East, therefore he did not have pale white skin". I can say that Jesus did not look like that therefore that picture is not Jesus, but I can't say because Jesus could not have looked like all the paintings I have ever seen of Jesus, Jesus did not exist. Similarly I can say that the Medieval unicorn of heraldry is a fabrication and that the biblical and classical unicorns from which they are derived probably did not look like that, but I can't say because there are no known creatures that look like Medieval unicorns, that unicorns do/did not exist, period. I actually believe, that since unicorns do not come from mythology, they may have been based on something real that existed once but may no longer exist. I am an agnostic unicornist (where I don't say exactly what a unicorn is, just as normally when discussing God's existence we don't say exactly what God is)

If you had said dragons instead of unicorns, I would say I don't believe in dragons and I have no proof. I think (but don't know) they are entirely mythological but how did the meme of dragons start and get to be so successful in so many different places? Are they in fact based on something else that did exist? Probably not, but can I rule that out? I am an agnostic adragonist. But in all these cases, I am agnostic because these things are unknown or unknowable. I would say I am a gnostic asantaist because I 'know' that Santa Claus does not exist. I know that Santa does not exist because I have had to fill in for him as far as my nearest and dearest are concerned EVERY time. Not once, has he done what he is supposed to do, so unless he is a very bad Santa, he doesn't exist.

Mike,
I did not make up the terms of agnostic atheist or agnostic theist I am using them as others do. I wasnt trying to add clarity, I was trying to make a case why I dont find the term 'agnostic' useful and an appeal not to use it.

Let's take Prof McGinn's quote "to believe that p is to take oneself to know that p.". Let's say I believe that Chelsea Football Club will win the English Premiership (and I do believe it). I can say I can take myself to know it. But I am not going to take all my money and bet that eventuality, because I in fact do not know that Chelsea *will* win the premiership although I believe it fervently (not because I am a Chelsea supporter). To take yourself to know something seems a bit fuzzy to me. I am not saying it isn't useful but it clearly means something different to knowing something. Agnosticism means that you believe something is unknown or cant be known about the existence of God (or some super natural phenomenon). Atheism in simple terms means the absence of belief in the existence of God. One can both believe that it is not possible to know if God exists and at the same time not have any belief in the existence of God. I think many people do not believe in the existence of God because of lack of evidence. Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence, so if you think there is no real evidence that God does exist you cannot say therefore God does not exist, but you can say you have no belief he does exist.

A theist can believe God exists and take it to be true without knowing it to be true (unless they have personal experience or witnessed a miracle or had a near-death experience or some other justified [to themselves] reason). I believe most theists are agnostic theists. I have never met anyone with perfect faith, such a person would be a gnostic theist and I dare say there are some.

I'm sorry, Nick. Your method of argumentation is like polishing with a dirty rag. You just keep widening the smudge.

Mike,

If you are not familiar with the terms "agnostic atheism" and "agnostic theism" and you find my attempts at explanation inferior, try researching these terms in the literature.

Nick,
Did I say you coined those terms? If you're not interested in clarity, what sort of case are you trying to make then?

Come on, Mike

You are both putting words in my mouth and trying to say I am putting words in your mouth.

I never claimed that you said that. I didn't even say that is what you thought. I thought it was possible you could have thought it (as one of a number of possibilities) and therefore I made it clear that I didn't originate these terms.These terms have nothing to do with "practice", if you had prior correct knowledge
of what these terms mean, you could not have stated that they did. I thought it was possible that you had heard these terms before without knowing what they meant, or that you had never heard them before or that you thought I had made them up. What was apparent is that you did not have a correct understanding of what these terms mean. In order to understand what they mean you have to have a particular understanding of what the terms "agnosticism" and "atheism" mean in the context of philosophy as opposed to any colloquial meaning of these words.

Atheism means only a lack of belief in existence, it does not require a belief of non-existence. All people that believe there is no God are atheists but not all atheists claim to believe there is no God. No atheist can claim to believe there is a God.

Agnosticism relates to a belief in what is not known or cannot be known about the existence of God. I am not going to give a full definition here.

These terms are not mutually exclusive. Knowledge used to be thought of as justified true belief although it has been argued that JTB is not a sufficient condition. I am not sure what the latest accepted version is . You can believe something that you do not know to be true. You can not believe something you know to be false. You can know what you justifiably believe to be true (arguably). You don't know something that you believe to be true without justification. The point is that knowledge and belief are not that closely linked.

Even as it is defined formally, I have problems with the meaning and usefulness
of the term "agnosticism". I was commenting on how the term is used now, technically, popularly and yes, historically, which is to highlight its ambiguities and redundancy. I can see that is not going to look like clarifying the situation. My purpose is to campaign for the change in definition of agnosticism, or its retirement from use, or its replacement although I realize that is not likely to happen any time soon but if in doing so, I am not adding to clarity, too bad. The eventual retirement/replacement of the word, would however, in my view, add to clarity.

OK Nick. Peace.

Cheers, Mike

Pax Americana (or is it Pax Britannica)

Cheers, Mike

Pax Americana (or is it Pax Britannica)

Here's just a couple of the problems I have with the term "agnosticism"

Maybe somebody here can help me out.

So one definition is that truth claims about the existence of God are unknown or unknowable.

"unknown" and "unknowable" are very different, that is a huge umbrella to hide in. Weak agnosticism says
"unknown" only and strong agnosticism says "unknowable". So this goes to usefulness since each time you refer to agnosticism you pretty much have to define which of these you mean anyway.

Let's take "unknowable". How can I claim something is unknowable that I claim not to be able to know anything about? In order to claim God's existence is unknowable, I have to claim quite a lot of knowledge about the nature of any possible God.

For God's existence to be unknowable, I would have to claim that God can not or will not reveal itself to us. A God which can not reveal itself perhaps does not fulfill the job description most of us would write for a God vacancy. To claim God will not reveal itself is to claim to know the mind of God and to make greater claims about the nature of God than many theists would.

Collin,

I enjoy reading your posts and enjoyed the conversations with Jonathan Miller. I sensed a little offense toward agonosticism, so I have to question, what's the harm in that? I do agree with you that religion can be harmful, though. I think Russell had it right saying while they cant prove there is a God, we cant prove there isnt one. I do think it is a safe idea to discard any belief in any idea of one. I suppose instead of "joining up with predefined terms", I would rather ignore all the fuss about this God and that God and say "on with it, get on with life and stop this non sense." I don't have time to write much else at the moment, but I figured all things aside, this radical baptist church website is quite funny for all anyone who has time. It kind of goes to show what sort of folks we have out there. Give it a good read (The reporting Atheists to the FBI is quite interesting) :P

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/beliefs.html

Brandon,
Here's a bit of background on the "Landover Baptist Church":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landover_Baptist_Church

Since the conversation has died down, I just thought people might be interested in watching a brief segment of a television interview with Prof. McGinn addressing the same issues he writes about in his essay. I hope it's OK for me to provide a link to it here:
http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Arguments-Contra-God-Colin-McGinn-/795

For comparison, here is a segment with John Searle talking about the same issue:
http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Arguments-for-Agnosticism-John-Searle-/1513

Both philosophers appear to have very similar positions on the question of God and religion, except that Searle doesn't mind using the word "agnosticism" in much the same sense that Russell used it. Searle makes many of the same points as Prof. McGinn. It's interesting to compare the two interviews.

These two segments are just two of many that you can watch. The two philosophers have much more to say on other subjects, especially the nature of consciousness. Also, there are numerous other interviews with other philosophers and some well-known scientists. Here's a page with links to all the interviews:
http://www.closertotruth.com/participants

Dear Colin, You believe that there is no God, and you are shouting out trying to convince the whole world of your belief. But, what if the King James Bible is true? What if there is, THE ONE TRUE GOD who Knows the end from the beginning, and has a MASTER PLAN for the universe? What if there is one that God created named Lucifer, that rebelled against his Creator that led to one third of the angels of Heaven being cast out, becoming demons, all according to Gods MASTER PLAN? I AM SURE, that all this and MUCH MUCH MORE has been conveyed to you many times in the past, but I just felt led to add a few more words in the hope that you might possibly give way to thinking for maybe just a little while, that it might be possible that you could be WRONG.
Colin, IF THERE IS NO GOD----WHO IS PERFORMING ALL THE MIRACLES that are happening every day, that are not being reported on the net work news. When the doctors called my family to come say goodbye to me because they had given up any hope of my recovery. Laying there in the hospital bed surrounded by loved ones, saying their goodbyes, a woman walked in and said that God had sent her there to pray for me. She prayed in the name of JESUS CHRIST, for just a few minutes and then began praying for my aunt that was sitting in a chair, close beside of my bed. Suddenly, a very bright light filled the room and everyone but the lady that was praying, fell down to the floor ! I felt myself being lifted up from my bed into thin air and tried to hold my body down, but then let go, saying Lord, Lord, through trembling lips as I floated there between heaven and earth. I will never forget my mother and my aunt sitting there in those chairs, staring at me with eyes wide open in amazement. I heard there words as I tried to grasp hold of what was taking place---- I HAVE A WORK FOR YOU TO DO, YOU ARE GOING TO LIVE AND NOT DIE. I was then gently lowered to my bed, the light faded, and friends and family were able to get up from the floor. Two days later, I got in my car that was in the hospital parking lot, and drove myself home. That was in Oct. 1986. Colin, That to me, and my family and friends,that witnessed it, not to mention all the doctors and hospital staff, was a MIRACLE, that has changed my life. I still don't know to this day, how my hospital bill, that was HUGE, mysteriously got payed, making it a BIGGER MIRACLE ! I have since that time seen many different kinds of miracles. The greatest, being a man that died and was filled full of chemicals, and put in a coffin, ready for burial. Three days later, his wife said that God had spoken to her that He was going to bring him back to life again. On a table underneath a platform, that a preacher by the name of Reinhart was using to tell thousands of people about GODS MASTER PLAN. The man that was as they described, cold and stiff like iron, opened his eyes and slowly to the amazement of all that were there, sit up very much alive, and is preaching the same message today, about this MASTER PLAN OF THE MIRACLE WORKING GOD. I could write a book on just the miracles that I personally have seen, not counting the many thousands that have been documented as being true. Do you and them like you simply toss these proofs into a place in the back of your minds and refuse to even consider that you might possibly---be wrong, about there being a God? Are you that closed minded??? Myself and many millions more, with one voice declare together that we are very sure that there is THE ONE TRUE GOD THAT HAS A MASTER PLAN----AND JESUS CHRIST IS OUR LORD.
I pray that The Holy Spirit will lead you out of the Spiritual darkness that you are in, and lead you to the LIGHT OF THE WORLD and the GIVER OF EVERLASTING LIFE. In the name of JESUS CHRIST--AMEN

You gave me a good chuckle there, especially the bit about all the miracles that the news media refuses to report. The reason I reject all such stories is the same reason you reject the ravings of primitive animists and believers in ancient nature gods, viz. there is no sound evidence for any of it--just the say-so of the faithful.

Dear Colin, would you consider doctors reports of healing miracles as proof? If I prove to you within logical reason that miracles have and are continuing to take place in this world, would it move you one inch from your dogmatic point of no see, can\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t be? Deaf and dumb since birth--- Healed in Jesus name--Many of them in the past few years---Can prove it. Blind healed---Can prove it. x rays before and after healing miracles. dental miracles. Colan cancer and many others. May 14, 1945---Israel becomes a nation. Surrounded by five well equipped army\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s with tanks, war planes, and artillery,hell bent on pushing the few poorly armed Israelis into the sea. With only one tank three artillery pieces, and a small plane to meet the massive forces determined to wipe them from the face of the earth, they held the land that their God was calling them back to, and within one year had forced all the mighty army\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s out of Israel. THAT WAS A MIRACLE OF GOD.....THE WHOLE WORLD WITNESSED IT HAPPEN !!!

Yesterday I jumped off my balcony from the 43rd floor shouting "Boogawooga!" (the name of the god of gravity). Instead of hitting the ground and being killed, I floated serenely down as the law of gravity was suspended by Boogawooga. It was a miracle. (But don't try this yourself, as it doesn't always work; you have to pronounce "Boogawooga" just right.)

Do you believe me? If not, why not?

Hi Colin,

I am enjoying listening to your \\\"Discovering the Philosopher in You\\\" audio series on MP3. I am a Christian theist and am encouraged by the definition of tolerance you give in these lectures.

In this post you ask:

\\\"I say I am an atheist, and that is true. But the label is misleading in that it characterizes me from the perspective of a theist: I am a rejecter of theism (why can’t I describe theists as rejecters of atheism, thus privileging my own position?).\\\"

Ironically, as an atheist, you are by definition \\\"a\\\" - \\\"theist\\\", a position defined nominally as the opposite position to a theist. Theism is the root of the term and the concept, and thus atheism is defined as a position relative to that. So unless atheists can come up with another name, theism will remain the point of reference in the definition of your particular worldview.

Regards,

Roger.

Just as you, Roger, are an a-Santa-ist and a-polytheist. I am a mysterian naturalist and moral objectivist (but I can also be negatively described as an atheist).

Thank you Colin,

As I said, I am thoroughly enjoying your mp3 lectures called "Discovering the Philosopher in You". I find them very informative and engaging.

I must disagree though on your over-confident claim that Euthyphro's Dilemma "refutes" God as the source of objective morality. I hold, as many theists do, that this is a false dilemma and that there is a third option.

1. I agree that something is not good simply because God declares it so - this is moral relativism/subjectivism and is highly arbitrary.

2. I also agree that God doesn't declare something good simply because there is some Platonic form of "good" that transcends all of us, including God. This would be a reductionist view of God and would result in an infinite regress of the origins of "good".

3. The third option that splits the horns of the dilemma is not (1) or (2). The third option is that good is defined by the very inherant nature or essence of God. He does not arbitrarily declare his opinion of good. Goodness as a form is derived directly from God's nature and essence - a vital and non-extinguishable aspect of who God is.

Thus Euthyphro's dilemma is a false dilemma and has not "refuted" anything 2500 years ago. Christian theists fully understand the apparent dilemma and reject it as so on these grounds.

http://www.faithinterface.com.au/apologetics/euthyphros-dilemma

http://www.faithinterface.com.au/apologetics/euthyphros-lament-answered-by-philosopher

Please excuse me if my explanation is clumsy - I am not a professional philosopher, only a medical doctor with aspirations!

My other question to you is - how do you reconcile your moral objectivism with your professed atheism? What is the source of moral objectives in your worldview?

Thanks,

Roger.

The reason theists have favored the divine command theory over the ages is that it confers specific content on morality, which your "third option" does not. How, say, do we get the morality of promising out of it?

Morality has no basis other than itself, like logic and mathematics. But it is possible to find a small number of basic principles that underlie particular judgements, e.g. that suffering is a bad thing.

But Colin, why is suffering a bad thing (not that I'm offering mind you)? Purely because it involves unpleasant sensations? Is there not many situations where short term suffering can lead to long term happiness? For instance labor and childbirth? So it would seem simplistic to label all suffering as bad and then base your morality system on that assumption.

Equally, is happiness always a good thing? If I was to snort cocaine right now, I would probably feel pretty happy, at least in the short term. If I was to have sex with a prostitute, I would possibly feel happy for some minutes. But would that short term happiness be beneficial in the long term when my nasal septum rots away or my genitals develop syphilitic chances, and I go mad like Nietzsche?

In your audio lectures, you make the claim that murder is bad "in itself" or that rape is bad "in itself". In your system of materialism, what is the basis for these statements of moral objectivity? It cannot be purely based on utilitarian assumptions, because that is just a numbers game. If we did a thought experiment where more people were made happy by a particular rape or murder than the number who suffered, this would make it "moral" in the utilitarian system. So where else do you derive these assumptions about the inherant badness of rape and murder? Your own innate conscience and inner hunches about right and wrong possibly? If so, what is the source of these innate assumptions abour right and wrong?

Cheers,

Roger.

I suggest you have a look at any introduction to ethical theory to find your questions answered, e.g. Julia Driver's "Ethics: the Fundamentals". I subscribe to W.D. Ross's pluralist deontology with consequentialism. The question of the origins of our moral sense have been discussed by developmental psychologists. I deal with the question in my book "Ethics, Evil and Fiction". You need to acquaint yourself with such discussions if you are to be taken seriously; at present your questions are very naive.

Thank you Colin,

My questions may be naive, but are as yet inadequately answered by yourself, even in summary form, in this forum. Even possibly evaded. You make many confident assertions, but seem unwilling to engage with even summary answers to my simplistic questions. My questions may well be naive as I have openly revealed to you previously that, unlike yourself, I am not a professionally trained philosopher. Rather I am a health professional, with some idea of how life works. An average Joe Blow you might say, with average Joe Blow questions. Apologies for that.

In your lectures, you mention your Mysterian views regarding the Mind/Body problem and talk about the potentially unbridgable "epistemological/explanatory gap" between mind and brain. I don't disagree and affirm my own view that there may well be a permanent deficiency in our finite minds to fully discover and understand how mind and brain relate.

You seem confident though that, whatever the relationship may be in reality between mind and brain, it will necessarily be a materialistic one. How can you be so sure, if this relationship is unknowable? Why can't the relationship between mind and brain be a supernatural one? How can you discount a supernatural explanation so confidently? I would think all bets would be off regarding the true nature of the mind/brain explanatory gap. Is your confidence purely reflective of your a priori assumption of materialism?

Apologies again if this question is naive. I am always trying to learn. Surely enquiring theists deserve similar respect as enquiring atheists?

Regards,

Roger.

I simply find it tedious to go over ABC's that can be found in an introductory textbook--it's not a good use of my time. This is one reason I don't like doing this blog. If you are really interested in moral philosophy, have a look at some standard works--I mentioned one good one. People always have very naive philosophical opinions if they have not studied the subject in some depth.

I'm not a materialist; indeed I think it is ill-defined. One reason to reject supernaturalism is that it flies in the face of evolutionary theory.

Thanks Colin,

Sorry to be tedious. It must be horrendous to be forced to interact with every day people with every day questions. In my profession, I don't have the luxury of walling myself off from the tedium of the plebiscite.

My only word of advice is not to assume that any of these subjects like moral philosophy, origins of the cosmos, origins and development of life, etc are closed subjects, just because a bunch of modernist chauvanists have hubristically claimed to possess the default position.

I'm sure you agree that philosophy is, and should be, an egalitarian pursuit. Ultimate questions affect both the salaried thinker and the naive amateur.

Having said that, I am getting a great deal out of your audio lectures and learning a great deal from your engaging manner. Thank you for that.

Regards,

Roger.

It has nothing to do with what you call "modernist chauvinists": it is simply the wisdom of hundreds of years of serious thought. Just dip into the literature some time and you'll see.

A funny line from Bill Mahar yesterday:

"New rule: Stop calling disasters with a single survivor a 'miracle.' When a hundred and three people die but one lives, that's not a miracle -- that's God blowing a no-hitter in the bottom of the ninth."

Who has time to notice the problem of evil when miracles are all around?

Of course the correct spelling is "Maher."