Many people believe that the main difference between agnosticism and atheism is that atheism is dogmatic and closed-minded whereas agnosticism is more open and accepting. In reality, though, the difference between agnosticism and atheism isn’t a matter of degrees of certainty; the differences are primarily epistemological. The rowdy, unshakeable, dogmatic boisterousness associated with atheism is not a defining feature of the position, but is instead a persistent mischaracterization. In the olden days of yore, atheists were merely stereotyped as immoral, evil baby-eaters. Nowadays, we are characterized as arrogant and dogmatically certain immoral baby-eaters! This misguided stereotype must be put to rest, for we baby-eating atheists are actually quite moral and frequently embrace positions of fallibilism—the exact opposite of dogmatism!

Now, atheism is primarily seen as dogmatic because it assumes nonexistence given an absence of evidence. This is almost always the contentious point. An agnostic would assert that absence of evidence is not proof of absence, maintaining that asserting nonexistence without any evidence is an argument from ignorance. An atheist, on the other hand, finds it perfectly reasonable to conclude that something does not exist given an absence of any evidence. The atheist does not believe with certainty that God does not exist given the lack of evidence, only that this is more likely to imply that God does not exist. Thus, the point of contention between agnostics and atheists isn’t about certainty, but about whether nonexistence can be inferred from lacking evidence. As mentioned earlier, the dispute is mostly epistemological.

The problem is rather obvious. If something did not exist, we would expect to find no evidence of it, but even if the thing did exist we could expect to find no evidence of it, for the evidence could be hidden from us. Similarly, if I had no evidence that my dog could fly, and then argued, “But you have no evidence that my dog can’t fly!”, this would hardly be a convincing argument, as I’d be making the claim in the absence of any evidence, judging that my dog could fly from a position of complete ignorance.

These problems are not legitimate, and they pose no sort of barrier to professing atheism, though. While it is indeed an argument from ignorance to assert that my dog can fly in the absence of evidence, this is because a flying dog is the sort of thing that can be supported with evidence. If a dog could fly, we’d expect to find evidence of the dog zooming through the skies, perhaps dropping turd-shaped surprised on our heads. But the same is not true of nonexistence (particularly concerning the bit about shitting on one’s head from the sky). If something does not exist, would you expect the nonexistent thing to produce evidence of its nonexistence? Of course not. One would expect that the nonexistent thing would produce no evidence whatsoever. Thus, in the case of nonexistence, the absence of evidence is exactly what we’d expect to observe.

Nevertheless, it is true that we can never be certain that a thing does not exist, owing to the fact that we may merely be ignorant of the evidence. The agnostic is entirely correct to point this out. The problem, of course, is that atheists tend to take a pragmatic, fallibilistic epistemological approach, whereas agnostics seem tethered to the idea of an epistemology rooted in logical certainty. The atheist doesn’t care if his position is uncertain; he doesn’t necessarily demand logical certainty. All that matters is that the position fits the evidence better than other hypotheses. In the end, an agnostic who demands certainty from claims of nonexistence is demanding the unreasonable and the impossible.

Suppose, for instance, we apply the agnostic’s demand for certainty to positive claims. Most agnostics would accept that the theory of evolution adequately explains the origin of species and biological variation. Of course, the theory of evolution is open to the same sorts of criticisms that agnostics apply to atheism. For example, one can never be certain that the theory of evolution is true, because we could simply be ignorant of the evidence that falsifies it. The theory of evolution, also like atheism, is underdetermined by the data. The absence of evidence for God could be explained by our ignorance of the evidence; similarly, even given all the evidence for evolution, we can invent ad hoc explanations for our biological observations that also fit the data, such as, “God created organisms in such a way that they would appear evolved.” But the fact that we can apply different explanations to the data doesn’t call the theory of evolution into doubt, because these ad hoc explanations needlessly multiply explanatory entities, calling into existence a god-like entity when there is no additional evidence of such a being. The God explanation is also untestable, because even if we observed that nothing in biology supported evolution—there were no homologies, no vestigial parts, no transitional fossils, no progression of species through time in a linear fashion, etc.—we could still say, “God created life.” An omnipotent being could create life that apears to have evolved or appears to have not evolved. No matter what we observe, this explanation fits, and so it is a much poorer explanation than evolution. Evolution, on the other hand, fits the data perfectly, even though it could have been falsified at any moment, which shows that its fitting the data is surprising and highly unlikely—unless the theory were true! When creationism fits the data it is no big surprise, as it would explain any observation whatsoever, and hence finding observational support consistent with creationism is not all that surprising or unlikely.

Obviously, the situation is the same with claims of nonexistence. If something did not exist, we would expect it to produce no evidence, and this would be the only expectation. Now, it is true that the thing could exist and we could be ignorant of the evidence. So if the thing did exist, we could expect evidence of it, or we could expect it to be hidden and hide its evidence from view. Notice that, in this case, any observation is compatible with the thing existing. But only the absence of evidence is consistent with nonexistence. This shows that assuming nonexistence is most prudent. Not only is the prediction more exact, but it is also falsifiable. In that sense, the position of atheism is far from dogmatic. Instead, it is pragmatic—the atheist assumes nonexistence, but knows this position could be falsified so long as the theist produces legitimate evidence of God’s existence. To criticize atheism for its uncertainty is thus as silly as criticizing the theory of evolution for its uncertainty. What matters is that evolution assumes the least and fits the evidence best. Similarly, atheism assumes the least and fits the evidence (or lack thereof) best.

Suppose, though, that if God existed, we wouldn’t expect evidence of his existence. That is, suppose God was totally transcendant and unknowable. In this case, the atheist can’t argue that nonexistence is the most plausible hypothesis simply because it exactly predicts the absence of evidence. An unknowable, mystical, transcendant God would likewise predict only the absence of evidence.

At first blush, this appears to be a winning rejoinder. The problem in this case, though, is that professing belief in such a deity is to essentially profess a belief in nothing. If one believes that God is totally unknowable and mystical, then to say, “God exists” amounts to saying, “I-don’t-know-what exists.” The only reason an atheist cannot disbelieve in such a deity is because the theist has not bothered to even define it. It is as if the theist were saying, “Djklerhi exists!” and then, when asked to clarify, saying that Sjklerhi is uknowable and hence the theist can’t say anything more about it. How the theist knows an unknowable entity exists is also never explained. So while rendering the deity transcendant and mystical may avoid the criticism concerning the lack of evidence, it just runs into the criticism of incoherence, and thus this is really no threat to the position of pragmatic, fallibilistic atheism.

Because claiming nonexistence based solely on the absence of evidence is justified through fallibilistic epistemology, atheism is similarly justified. Of course, throughout this post I have assumed, for the sake of argument, that there is no evidence for or against God. This is, to put it mildly, a rather generous assumption. Those conceptions of gods as omnipotent and morally perfect, for instance, run into all kinds of logical difficulties concerning what it means to be all-powerful, whether this is consistent with the capacity to do no evil, and various other self-contradictions. Those conceptions of all-powerful, morally perfect gods who created the universe, physically interact with the world, and care about humanity are also problematic, as the existence of evil, the miniscule scale of humanity’s presence in such a vast universe, and the hostility of the natural environment to life all seem to be at odds with these conceptions of God. As such, the case for atheism is really much stronger than merely asserting, “There is no evidence for God!”, as there is in fact much evidence that implies various gods do not exist at all. But in the end even if there were no evidence for or against God, atheism would still be the most reasonable position, because epistemic fallibilism is a reasonable position, and because absence of evidence is more than adequate evidence for absence.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 9:29 PM and is filed under Atheism, Blog, Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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