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One of my greatest problems with atheists – in fact, probably my single greatest problem with atheists – is that for a bunch of people who make a lot of noise about being scientific, but tend to fall rather short of that not terribly elusive state. Let me show what I mean.  One of the most disturbing arguments against atheism and agnosticism that I come across on a regular basis is the idea that without some form of religious belief – and when I say religious, I note that the religions in particular that seem most amenable to this idea are Christianity and Islam – it is impossible to live a moral or ethical life. Politely, this is balderdash. Less politely, the rest of this piece will consist of an unforgiving examination of why. I have on occasion likened the extreme assurance that certain high profile atheists seem to feel about the rightness of their beliefs to the fundamentalism of many of those on the more theist side of the equation. And I make no apology for the fact that I probably spend more time arguing against atheists than theists here – in fact, I regard that as a major part of this series of posts. But there’s a limit to that. The differences between atheist fundamentalism and theist fundamentalism are somewhat more significant than the differences between, for example facist totalitarianism and communist totalitarianism. For instance, of these four ideologies, atheist fundamentalism has by far the best human rights record. The man best known to history as “Doubting Thomas” might seem an unlikely choice for the title of agnostic. And yet, there’s little in his story to suggest that he wasn’t. But to explain that, it’s necessary to clear up a common misconception about agnosticism. The classic idea of the agnostic is of a person who is indecisive and cannot commit to any one belief. Some interpretations (not those made by actual agnostics) are based on the idea that agnostics are forbidden to believe. That’s an oversimplification. Agnostics are not forbidden to believe – we simply choose not to believe without proof. Now, if your entire belief system is based on belief without proof, I can see where this is a fine distinction that may seem unimportant to you. But the story of St Thomas is an excellent illustration of how important it can be. Thomas is mentioned only one time each in the Gospels of Luke (3:18), Mark (6:15) and Matthew (10:3) – and in each of them, it is in a listing of the calling of the twelve apostles. Only in the Gospel of John does he get much time on stage. His first mention is in John 11:16, when he persuades the other apostles to go with Jesus to resurrect Lazarus. Interestingly, it’s Jesus who in this story wants the apostles to witness the miracle so that they will have proof. Next, in John 14:5, Thomas tells Jesus that despite his assurances to them, the apostles do not know what will happen to anyone after death. Jesus responds with a complex explanation of how the afterlife works, and no more is said on the subject. (In Australian political terms, Thomas fed Jesus a dixer here.) Finally, in chapter 20, there is the story for which Thomas is best known, when Jesus begins appearing to people after his resurrection, and Thomas keeps missing him. It would qualify as a running gag if it were better told. Thomas refuses to believe that Jesus has come back from the dead – not an unreasonable position, although given that he has already seen Jesus resurrect Lazarus, and the lack of any history showing the apostles playing practical jokes on each other, his doubt is somewhat obdurate. One gets the impression it has less to do with rigid adherence to proof and more with feeling left out. In any case, Jesus finally appears, and tells Thomas to examine his scars – and how I love that every analysis I can find makes a point of mentioning that it is not clear whether or not Thomas touches the scars, because touching scars is, y’know, icky and all. Thomas does, and is convinced, and Jesus reverses his earlier position on proving resurrections, telling Tom that he should have believed without proof. So, given all this, why do I think Thomas can be seen as an agnostic? First, he wants to see the miracle for himself when Lazarus is resurrected. Next, he is the only one to point out that no man knows what the afterlife is like. And finally, of course, he demands proof of the resurrection of Jesus. In the first and third cases, it’s made clear that he believes after seeing. In the second, it’s less clear what he believes, but the fact that Jesus successfully predicted his own return to life surely lends credence to his other remarks on the subject. And despitethe remarks made by Jesus about belief without proof, it’s clear that requiring proof for one’s beliefs is no disqualification for sainthood. St Thomas may not be the most popular of the saints, but there is still no shortage of churches named for him. By implication, the church does have a place for those who adhere to a higher standard of evidential proof – although there’s very few Christian sects who’d come out and say so. There is, and need be, no contradiction between doubt and belief – they can be seen as the absence and presence of proof, respectively – and as such, I think it’s no great stretch to claim St Thomas the Doubter as a proto-agnostic. One of the criticisms I hear about agnosticism is that it’s a soft option. That despite agnostic rhetoric regarding the search for truth and so on, most agnostics aren’t searching very hard. There’s certainly an element of truth in that. I don’t know any agnostic whose entire life is devoted to the search for truth. But then, I don’t know anyone else whose life is either. After all, if you’re atheist or a theist, you believe that you already know the truth (despite the lack of any verifiable proof). Why would you need to keep searching for it when you already know it? (Particularly if you’ve got this fun double-standard to apply.) And even if you did struggle with it in making that decision, if you had doubts about your faith before you committed to it, or you committed to your faith and then had doubts about it later, the odds are that you spent less time in that search for truth than an agnostic the same age as you has. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that agnostics are like Argus, with an unsleeping gaze that misses nothing. We’re human. We have our failures, misunderstandings and lazinesses like the rest of you. But what we don’t have is the close-mindedness necessary to reject new claims or new evidence out of hand. Agnosticism no more requires nothing but searching than theism requires nothing but prayer. It does require an open mind, one that does not race to judgement, and one that admits to and corrects error when it occurs. The most common characterisation of agnostics that I’ve come across, from both theists and atheists, is that agnostics are simply indecisive. (Rather amusingly, Richard Dawkins mentions this in “The God Delusion” – it seems that this is the one part of the Christian dogma he was taught in school that he has inexplicably failed to subject to his normal heroic scorn.) There is an overall sense that agnostics are somehow weak-willed, pusillanimous folk who really just need to show some backbone. As if standing up to this pressure from both sides to make a decision – any decision being better than none, apparently – did not require considerable backbone. We’re all familiar with managers and politicians who need to be seen to be making decisions, leading to an endless and pointless stream of changed decisions. The usual cure proposed is that they should make up their minds once and for all. (The idea that persisting in an error might well be worse than not making a decision – Iraq, anyone? – seems just a foreign.) Let me ask you something: Why? Why is it so important to make a decision, now, today, before all the facts are in? Generally speaking, in this life, anyone who wants you to do that is selling something – and hiding some nasty surprises in the small print. That’s what I would assume about any salesman or politician who tried to it on – why should I assume any differently just ‘cos it’s a preacher talking? But let’s assume good faith (so to speak) on the part of those pushing us to make this decision. I think they suffer from a failure of the imagination. They don’t seem able to see that there might be more information on which to base decisions later on. They don’t want to admit that there will probably be more options to choose among if the decision is delayed (despite the fact that even the most cursory glance at religious history will show that there will most likely be some new splinter faith formed in the next five minutes or so). Most insultingly, they don’t seem willing to acknowledge that choosing not to choose is a valid (or in extreme cases of this narrow-mindedness, a possible) choice. This has been bothering me for some time now. It was pointed out to me by a good friend who happens to be an atheist – an actual atheist (which is a distinction I’ll clarify further down), not a mis-named atheist. The long and the short of the book is this: Jacobs attempts to live by the rules in the Bible as directly and completely as possible. In fact, it’s subtitled “One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible“, and that is a fairly accurate boast. The state of biblical interpretation being what it is, this is one of the most interesting books I’ve read in some time. How many people are willing to up-end their entire life, at least potentially, not what they do believe in, but for what they don’t?
Kudos are due to Jacobs both how thoroughly he throws himself into this research, how honestly he reports its effects on him, and how good a job he does avoiding the easy cheap shots against fundamentalists of all stripes. All in all, this is a fascinating book that any agnostic (and anyone else, I would think) should find an interesting and thought-provoking read. Despite what you may have heard from Robert Asprin’s press agent, there was a shared-world anthology that predated Thieves World by several hundred years. (It also outsold it not inconsiderably, although as in the case of Dan Brown, it should be remembered that popularity is not the same thing as literary merit.) It meets all the criteria: it is the work of multiple authors all working within the premises of a single setting, published in a unified form. It is, as the title has already spoiled for the more alert reader, The Bible. But, considered this way, the question must needs be asked: is it any good? Continue reading The Bible considered as a shared-world anthology It is both pleasing and infuriating to me that today, in a number of UK cities, busses carrying a variety of self-proclaimed ‘atheist’ slogans are out doing the rounds. You can read atheists patting themselves on the back about it all over. And to be fair, it is a worthy achievement, and one I support with but one reservation. That one reservation, though, is not far short of being a deal-breaker for me. Because the slogan that’s getting the most play is this one: There’s probably no God. Continue reading On The Busses It’s probably unfair of me to regard many atheists as being in denial. But I don’t think it’s at all unfair to think that many of them (and indeed, a great majority of all people, whatever they may or may not believe) are insufficiently rigourous in their exercise of logic and their application of semantics. (I’d say I was a terrible snob, but that’s not true – I’m really very good at it Continue reading A Question of Semantics As the title suggests, it doesn’t have a lot to do with agnosticism – although it does treat doubt with more courtesy and respect than Dawkins seems capable of. It’s a fascinating read, too, which again scores it above “The God Delusion” – and it has some interesting ideas about both faith and doubt, and the historical context of both. But I feel it misses the point of its own arguments. |
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