Solipsism is generally defined as the belief that nothing exists but the self. In other words, that the only thing that one can prove the existence of is one’s own mind. From there, of course, it’s a short distance to the idea that nothing else exists. There are some obvious problems with solipsism, notably that the mind that is all that exists does not seem to have very much control over its reality.

This leads to another, related position, which is that although other minds may be real, the world itself is not. This position is sometimes called Simulationism, and in the simplest possible explanation, it’s that we live inside the Matrix (or a similar false reality). This is similar to solipsism, but neatly explains the lack of control problem mentioned above.

This is where agnosticism re-enters the picture. Because the single biggest problem shared by Solipsism and Simulationism is that neither of them is falsifiable. Even if I were to suddenly wake up now to find Lawrence Fishburne explaining to me that I had left the simulation and was now in reality, I could never be 100% certain that I had not simply entered another, larger simulation that contains the first one.

I don’t believe or want to believe in either hypothesis, but as an agnostic, I can also not disbelieve either of them: I can neither prove nor disprove them, ever. Even my death would not disprove solipsism – although it would prove that someone other than me was the solipsist.

Agnosticism: when you’re certain you want to doubt.

It’s hard, therefore, to say what he believed in. The arc of his spiritual evolution is too complex, and resists easy summation.

I’m reasonably sure, however, that when he said that “the best lack all conviction,” he did not mean that lacking convictions was a mark of the best. The context of the rest of poem makes it clear that this lack is a harbinger or a result of onrushing apocalypse (in one sense or another of that work), if not both at once.

But what if that was what he had meant? What if he did mean that those who lack all conviction are truly the best among us?

It would then seem to be praising agnostics for being agnostics. As an agnostic myself, it’s an attractive thought.

But I do not think that it is a true one. In my experience of the world, one’s professed beliefs, or lack thereof, seem to have little to do with one’s moral worth as a person. A person’s actual beliefs, sure. Those are indicators. But there are too many who say one thing and do another.

In particular, there are people of every shade of belief and non-belief, doubt and certainty, who are dogmatically opposed to anyone else being dogmatically opposed to them. Physicians who seem incapable of healing themselves of the exact same illness they so abominate in others. (This is because there are three kinds of people in the world: the vast majority who do not understand irony, the tiny minority who do, and Alanis Morrisette fans.)

So whether or not the best are those who lack all conviction – and I rather think that they are not, if only because I do not trust a belief I so want to believe – I find that I agree with Yeats on his next point.

That truly, “the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Seems fairly unobjectionable, for the most part. I might disagree about the parsimony argument (as I’ve previously stated, tongue only partially in cheek, I find polytheism more likely than monotheism) – there are many phenomena described by science that do not seem so very parsimonious to me (our own intelligence among them), but for the most part, this is a well-reasoned argument.

Except for this statement: “if there were immensely powerful incorporeal consciousnesses out there, they would be a hot research topic in any number of scientific disciplines”. Because that is one of the most unscientific remarks I have ever heard.

If every scientist felt like that, we would not today have the sciences of micro-biology or particle physics, to name but two. And conversely, if the existence of scientific study into a thing is all it takes to prove that it is true, then alchemy and astrology were apparently true during the Middle Ages.

Fortunately, a truly scientific attitude begins with an admission of ignorance, and seeks to correct it. This is why, unlike the author of Aardvarkaeology, I am an agnostic.

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.

That’s worth considering.

At no point in history have atheists burned people at the stake for not following the same dogma as them. At no point have they mounted crusades, jihads or any such state of war. At no point have they used what they believe as a justification for rape, murder, theft or anything else that is generally explicitly forbidden by the dogma of most theist religions. (Not that they’re incapable of hypocrisy, just that they tend toward more socially acceptable forms of hypocrisy.)

Most atheists are generally as moral and decent as anyone else. Sometimes moreso, although those tend to be the ones who are deliberately setting out to disprove the common theist assertion that without religion to teach moral behaviour, there wouldn’t be any. (Theists are, for the most part, woefully ignorant of both philosophy and game theory, each of which manage to provide non-religious justifications for moral behaviour. But I digress.)

But you know what?

So are most agnostics. And we’re a lot less dogmatic about it.

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.

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.

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.