Hey there, Internet.
We need to have conversation about the problem of agnostic atheism. It seems to me that a large number of secular atheists tend to identify strongly with the agnostic label. They often tend to view it with a certain philosophical reverence, too, as if agnosticism were some kind of amazingly sophisticated idea. That reputation, however, is not well deserved, and we're not doing ourselves any favors by letting such a flimsy philosophical idea to go unchallenged.
Here's the basic problem. Agnostic atheism is a lot like the popular marketing slogan that says, “all natural ingredients.” It certainly feels enticing at first glance, but only as long as you don’t think about it. After all, anything made of physically material stuff is technically “natural” isn't it? All atoms in the known universe are supposedly part of the natural world, and so it somewhat trivial for any beverage to claim all-natural ingredients.
Or maybe that's not really what the phrase means? For example, one could try to argue that "all natural" is only meant to imply that no human beings were involved in the physical mixing or assembly of its ingredients. But even that interpretation fails to make any sense, because now the claim becomes outright false. Unless you’re literally bottling the pure, unfiltered of, say, the Atlantic ocean itself, then anything you do to it after the fact is technically “unnatural.” And even if you did, in fact, do exactly that for some reason, it would hardly be worth drinking in the first place. Just because something is natural, that doesn't automatically make it healthy.
And that's the problem with agnosticism in a nutshell. At best, it is so trivial as to be meaningless to even say out loud. At worst, it is just flat-out wrong, and it only makes us look like a bunch of fools for perpetuating it anyway.
I realize this conversation is going to make a lot of people upset to hear, and frankly, that’s
exactly why we need to have it. The philosophy of agnostic atheism is
not sacred, and it's practically oozing with deep, logical flaws. Yet every time I try to explain this stuff to a typical agnostic crowd, they
always seem to react with an angry defensiveness that borders on outright
fanaticism. I haven’t even begun to articulate the arguments yet, and I can already
feel the childish onslaughts of insults, character assassinations, and straw
men heading my way. So before we get started with the actual meat of this presentation, I
can’t help but feel compelled to remind everyone of how a proper philosophical analysis works.
Agnosticism, at the end of the day, is just a word. It is not an identity, it is not an ideology, and it is not a way of life. It is a label that we can either choose, or not choose, to describe ourselves with. Presumably, you might choose to describe yourself as an agnostic atheist because it reasonably articulates your personal stance on the subject of God. That's fine. If, however, such a label were to imply certain logical absurdities of which you were unaware, then surely you would like to know about them, wouldn’t you? No one wants to run around spreading confused misinformation, and I would like to think that agnostic atheists are no exception. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to explain the many philosophical problems with agnostic atheism so that we can stop confusing each other with bad ideas. I promise, if you’ll just indulge me for a few moments and think honestly about the arguments, you’ll begin to see that agnostic atheism is not the rigorous philosophical concept that popular influencers would have you believe.
Right then. Think we can call get on board with that? Great. Now let’s kick things off by asking ourselves a very simple question:
What exactly does it mean to call yourself an agnostic atheist?
Well, for starters, everyone knows that word itself---agnostic---simply means "without knowledge." Thus, at first glance, it would appear that agnosticism suggests a kind of personal uncertainty. That is to say, to call yourself an agnostic atheist is to simply say that, while you may personally believe there is no God, you also lack the confidence to claim knowledge of that proposition. Indeed, that is exactly how many popular atheists tend to describe themselves in public spaces. Rather than just deny God's existence outright, we routinely hear atheists claiming to merely "lack belief." Knowledge, in their view, has not yet been sufficiently justified, and so they practically bend over backwards to emphasize this idea of not knowing for certain that God isn't real. It would all be perfectly fine and reasonable, too, if not for one little problem. This entire premise is nothing but a gigantic lie!
It's important to understand that agnostic atheists are not casually shrugging their shoulders and expressing a personal mental state. They'd like you to think that's what they're doing, and they sometimes even express it in those exact terms. If, however, you actually pay attention, then it quickly becomes clear that agnostic atheists are making a sweeping declaration about the fundamental limits of knowledge itself. It's a textbook example of the classic logical fallacy known as the Motte and Bailey. The motte, in this instance, is the subjective lack of confidence---I don't believe in any God's existence, but I also can't prove that fact with any certainty. If, however, you ask them to justify that position in further detail, then the agnostic will immediately transition to an indefensible Bailey---absolutely no one can know "for sure" there is no God, because the very proposition itself is fundamentally impossible to prove.
Don't believe me? It's all right there in their own, self-professed arguments. Take, for example, the famous agnostic scholar, Dr. Bart Ehrman [Ehrman, 2021],
"... agnosticism is a statement about epistemology---that is, about what a person knows. Do I know whether there is a God in the multiverse? Nope. I really don’t. How could I know? I’m just a peon on a very big planet, circling around a very big star, which is one of some 100 billion stars in this galaxy, which is only one of anywhere from 100 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in this universe, which may be only one of trillions (infinite number?) of universes. So, well, I don’t have a broad perspective on the question. So I don’t know. I’m agnostic."
In other words, the world is a really big place, and we have yet to scour every last nook and cranny of the entire physical universe (and beyond). It therefore stands to reason that, until someone finally does exactly that, then no one can say with certainty that no gods exist. Blah, blah, blah, proving a negative, Russell's teapot, etc., etc...
I cannot stress enough that Bart Ehrman is hardly alone in this kind of thinking. Arguments like his are wildly popular among secular influencers, and they seem to encompass the sum total of all philosophical justification for agnostic atheism. So let's dig a little deeper and ask ourselves right now:
Is it really that difficult to prove a universal negative?
In other words, must we honestly perform an exhaustive search of the entire multiverse itself before we can finally claim knowledge about the non-existence of things?
Consider the following thought experiment.
Suppose I were to tell you that, buried somewhere deep in the vast piles of United States mail, there exists an envelope containing a perfectly rendered depiction of a square-circle. As in, literally, a Euclidean plane figure that is simultaneously a four-sided polygon of equal lengths and a smooth curve consisting of all points that are equidistant from a reference. Ask yourself right now. Does such a thing exist? Yes or no?
Obviously, the correct answer is NO. But why? How can we possibly know that? Did we personally inspect every last piece of mail throughout the entire United States Postal Service (and beyond)? Or is there perhaps some other way to arrive that such conclusions?
The answer, it turns out, lies in pure, logical deduction. The definitional properties of squares and circles are mutually incompatible. We can therefore immediately declare, with absolute logical certainty, that square-circles do not exist. We can do all of this entirely from the comfort of our own armchairs, simply by analyzing the meaning of the words themselves.
Notice that this declaration has nothing whatsoever to do with the world, per se, but everything to do with language and definitions. When I declare that no pieces of paper can accurately depict a square-circle, I'm not bragging about my personal exploration through an entire universe's worth of envelopes. Rather, what I'm really saying is that the rules of language and logic prevent me from describing any actual thing in those terms. You show me a picture of literally anything, and there is no logically consistent way for me to affirm that such a thing is both a square and a circle.
Notice also that we can even extend this kind of reasoning to empirically falsifiable claims. For example, suppose I were to tell you that there exists a magical postal service that instantly teleports all United States mail to its destination. All you have to do is twinkle your nose, rub your belly, and wish upon a star, and your letter will actually teleport automatically to its destination. Don't believe me? Try it yourself!
Oh, what's that? You mean it didn't work as I said? Well golly! I guess that means no such service exists, don't you think? My existence claim has therefore been reasonably falsified, wouldn't you say?
So yes, my agnostic friends, we can indeed "know" that certain things don't exist, even if the universe happens to be really big. It therefore stands to reason that, if the idea of God were likewise defined by incoherent or falsifiable properties, then we can likewise "know" that no such being exists, either.
And boy howdy, is God ever so rife with all kinds of logical and empirical absurdities! Here's just a few off the top of my head:
- The omnipotence paradox
- The problem of evil and suffering
- The problem of divine hiddenness
- The problem of omniscience and free will
- The problem of the trinity
- The problem of necessary existence
- The problem of substance dualism
- The Euthyphro Dilemma
- The problem of immaterial beings
- The problem of supernatural beings
- The problem of Hell
We can do this all day. Any time someone tries to talk about God in the traditional monotheistic sense, they are basically speaking gibberish. We can absolutely conclude with the highest philosophical confidence that such a God does not exist. The foundational premise of agnostic atheism is therefore completely wrong, and demonstrably so.
"But wait!" I'm sure some of you are saying. "That only disproves the existence of some gods. You still haven't disproved the existence of every conceivable God in human imagination. For all you know, there could still exist a nebulous form of higher power that possesses many approximations to the properties we associate with God. Therefore, you don't know for sure that no God exists."
Okay... That may technically be true, but it's not exactly the philosophical flex you think it is. The moment anyone resorts to this kind of rhetoric, they have effectively conceded the entire argument. It's an open admission that we can, in fact, know with rigorous logical certainty, that certain variations of God are most definitely not real. And since that already includes the singular deity of classical monotheism, the debate is officially settled. Nobody builds churches in honor to the nebulous higher powers what may or may not be hiding somewhere in the outer reaches of the Virgo galactic supercluster. They worship at the altars of El, Allah, Abba, and Yahweh, plus all of the traditional variations and derivatives thereof. So if that isn't the concept of God you're referring to in your agnostic atheism, then I honestly have no idea what the hell you're even talking about---and frankly, neither does anyone else. The very argument itself is nothing but a gigantic fallacy of equivocation and moving goal posts.
"But wait again!" I hear people saying. "Those mysterious higher powers are important to me, dammit! Unless you can decisively prove the nonexistence of every possible variation of deity to ever to arise from human imagination (and beyond), then I can't say for sure that no such entities exist. Therefore, I must still describe myself as an agnostic atheist. And frankly, if we're being honest with ourselves, so must you."
Sigh… seriously? Is that seriously the burden of proof you expect me to meet before finally elevating your belief to the status of knowledge? Because if that really is the road you want to go down, then I promise you, it will only end in madness. It all begins by asking yourself one simple question:
Barring the usual logical inconsistencies and empirically falsifiable claims, can you name a single thing that you know does not exist?
Seriously. Anything at all. It could Santa Claus, leprechauns, vampires, or even the flying space monkeys of planet Neptune. Can you disprove the existence of any of these creatures, plus all of their logically possible variations? Yes or no?
This is a philosophical challenge that I like to call the Agnostic's Dilemma. No matter how you choose to answer, it doesn't work out well for the usual philosophy of agnostic atheism.
For instance, suppose your answer is "yes." We can indeed prove the nonexistence of certain creatures. That's great! Now please do me a favor and put together a comprehensive presentation of your analysis---say, for example, the definitive philosophical proof for the nonexistence of unicorns. I shall then take your exact argument, scribble out the word "unicorn," and then replace it with the word "God." I guarantee you, the logic will be equally valid in both cases. Therefore, by your very own standard of knowledge, we can indeed claim the same degree of certainty with respect to God.
If, however, your answer is no, then pray tell, my dear agnostic friends. What exactly does it mean to "know" anything at all? For all you know, there could exist an evil mad scientist who likes to keep brains in a special vat and subject them to a giant matrix-style simulation. For all you know, your own brain could be sitting in one of those vats right now, and your entire lived experience is nothing but an elaborate illusion. For all you know, your very own mother could be an NPC generated by a sophisticated computer algorithm. It's all technically possible, isn't it? We cannot know for sure that our entire world is nothing but a complete illusion, can we? The agnostic is therefore left with a serious problem. Until you figure out how to disprove the existence of the evil brain-in-a-vat mad scientist, you cannot claim to know anything whatsoever about the external world. As in, literally, you cannot claim to know anything about anything.
Congratulations, my wonderful agnostics friends! You officially discovered Cartesian skepticism. Well done. You're finally all caught up with the cutting edge of 17th century philosophy.
This is exactly why the philosophy of agnostic atheism grinds my gears. Proponents go out of their way to present themselves as these ultra-sophisticated philosophical thinkers, yet their entire concept of epistemology is stuck 400 years in the past. At best, agnostic atheism is merely ignorant, in that there are plenty of strong arguments with which to justify a confident knowledge claim. At worst, however, it is nothing but a death spiral into outright solipsism! If you cannot disprove the existence of the evil mad scientist, then the very idea of knowledge itself loses all meaning. The very same arguments used to justify agnostic atheism apply equally well to vampires, Santa Claus, flying space monkeys, and even your very own god-damned mother.
Bear in mind now that I'm not saying this stuff to play "gotcha" with some obtuse technicality. Rather, I'm simply applying the very standard of knowledge that agnostics themselves are proposing. It is therefore kind of strange that I have never encountered a single human being who ever insisted on qualifying themselves as an agnostic avampirist, an agnostic motherist, an agnostic a-flying-space-monky-ist, or an agnostic a-mad-science-vat-brain-ist." Yet if nobody ever actually does that, then why exactly are agnostic atheists so hell-bent on making such ferocious exceptions for God? Either it applies equally well to literally every synthetic proposition you could ever hope to make, or God is just special somehow, and agnostics are pleading in his defense.
Fortunately, there's a perfectly simple solution to this entire metaphysical debacle. All we have to do is reevaluate the meaning of knowledge. So again, let's ask ourselves that same question we asked before:
What exactly does it mean to "know" anything at all?
More to the point, must all synthetic propositions really defeat the problem of external-world skepticism before you'll finally assign them a confident truth value? Or, just maybe, can we perhaps bend the meaning of knowledge, just a little bit, so that it actually expresses something useful?
Allow me to now introduce you to the basic philosophy of science. It all begins by embracing the doctrine of philosophical skepticism. You will never, ever, "know" anything about the external world with infallible philosophical certainty. That is an insurmountable problem, and no one is ever going to solve it. Just accept that already and get over it. That being said, it is important to remind ourselves that nobody ever uses the word "knowledge" in that kind of absolute philosophical sense. Knowledge does not have to be perfectly infallibly inerrant before we can confidently declare it as such. All it means is that, god forbid, we might just have to admit that we're going to be wrong from time to time... and that's okay!
It cannot be stressed enough that scientists are simply not interested in the assignment of arbitrary truth values to linguistic propositions. Rather, science is all about the generation of empirically predictive models. Nobody believes in the current laws physics out of respect for the capital-T "Truth." We believe them because they parsimoniously explain a wide body of prior empirical observations while simultaneously granting us the power to predict the consequences of our actions. We therefore choose to continue applying them for all future empirical predictions, and we are more than happy to stop applying them if/when something better happens to come along. That is what knowledge means in the scientific world, because it is the only conception of knowledge that actually does somethings useful. We therefore know the second law of thermodynamics is true, just as we also know that, in principle, it could all hypothetically get proven wrong tomorrow. Contrary to what wannabe internet philosophers may tell you, these two propositions are perfectly compatible.
Notice also how this is the exact same standard of knowledge that everyone implicitly utilizes throughout their daily lives. When you look both ways to cross the street, you don't stop to wonder if that speeding bus is merely an illusory concoction of some prankster demon. You accept the mandates of your prior experience plus the empirically predictive models of high speed collisions. That is the closest thing to philosophical "knowledge" you are ever going to get in this world, so why not just bite the bullet and accept it for what it is? Pure, Gnostic knowledge!
This is how it is perfectly reasonable to claim knowledge of the fact that there is no such thing as God. It has nothing whatsoever with our ability to scour the furthest reaches of the multiverse (and beyond). It's because the idea of God has consistently failed to provide us with reliable empirical predictions. The burden of proof does not lie with me to philosophically derive God's nonexistence. Rather, the burden lies with theists to demonstrate otherwise. Furthermore, every concept of God that has ever been proposed has already been shown to be logically incoherent, empirically falsified, incompatible with prior knowledge about the universe, or just outright asserted without any evidence to back it up. God therefore has no place in our predictive modeling of the natural world, and so we simply choose to leave Him out as a result.
Please understand that I'm not the one who created any of these philosophical absurdities with agnostic atheism. They were sitting there all along, just hiding within the idea itself. All I'm doing is pointing them out, and I'm hardly the first person to do so. Yet every time I try to have this conversation with a group of agnostics, they almost always react as if I just threatened to kick their puppies. They'll actually say insane things like, "Stop forcing your beliefs on me!" or "why are you so intolerant and judgmental?" [Reddit, 2023]---as if merely analyzing a philosophical label were the emotional equivalent of a putting a gun to their heads! It's maddening, too, because agnostic atheists are the ones routinely talking shit about Gnostics, often describing them as a bunch of arrogant, unsophisticated, loud-mouth dummy heads.
One of my favorate examples of this attitude comes from none-other than the famous Neil deGrass Tyson himself [Tyson, 2012]. When asked point-blank whether or not he considers himself an atheist, he explicitly went out of his way to identify as agnostic. He admits openly that he doesn't believe in any God or Gods, yet he simultaneously refuses to associate with the very label that means exactly that. In his own words, Tyson doesn't like the word "atheist" because all the atheists he knows are too "active" for his liking. And since Tyson is a popular science educator, he doesn't want his message to be tainted by the psychological baggage of the dirty atheist label.
And you know what? That's perfectly fine! It's meaningful, it's consistent, it's honest, and it finally tells us the real reason why agnostics are so ferociously defensive about their label. They're not trying to express a rigorous philosophical idea. Rather, they're just kowtowing to the emotional sensibilities of religious fanatics. When you go out to dinner with your ultra-conservative Christian family, the last thing you want to do is get them all riled up with your non-belief [Reddit, 2024]. After all, in the eyes of a typical true-believing Christian, it is intrinsically confrontational to express a confident knowledge claim against their cherished beliefs. If, however, you just say something timid about merely not being convinced, then it tends to come off as a lot more non-threatening, don't you think?
Which brings us to the final reason why agnostic atheism gets under my skin. For all the philosophical pomp surrounding it, agnosticism is essentially just an act of submissive placation to religious bullies. Organized religion only ever thrives in a social environment where fanatics get to impose their beliefs onto others without challenge. The last thing they want is for a bunch of atheists make it clear to the public that theological beliefs can, in fact, be rejected with confidence. Thus, to protect their fragile egos against the evils of secular doubt, philosophers of religion simply changed the very meaning of knowledge itself. Rather than base it on empirically predictive models supported by a preponderance of hard data, they just raised the bar so high as to render everything a matter of "faith." Thus, nonexistence claims can simply by dismissed out of hand as impossible to ever prove, and all Gnostic atheists are subsequently derided as the unsophisticated philosophical plebeians that they are. It's absurd, it's manipulative, it's controlling, and for some extraordinarily confusing reason, a large majority of the atheist community routinely goes along with it!
The comedian Steven Colbert once famously joked that, "agnostics are just atheists without balls," [Colbert, 2007] and frankly, there's a lot of truth in that statement. You worked so hard to tear yourself away from a coercive religious authority, only to then embrace a label that was implicitly shaped by them to placate their sensibilities. Words mean things, and the way you use them can say a lot about the forces that control you. You would never think twice about strongly affirming the gnostic nonexistence of Santa Claus and vampires, so what exactly is compelling you to fight so hard for God?
References:
- Colbert, Steven, "I am America, and So Can You," Grand Central Publishing, 1st edition (2007)
- Ehrman, Bart, "On Being an Agnostic Atheist," The Bart Ehrman Blog (2021) [link]
- "Why are there so many agnostics on this forum?" r/Exmormon (2023) [link]
- Tyson, Neil DeGrass, "Neil deGrasse Tyson: Atheist or Agnostic?" Big Think (2012) [link]
- "Coming out as agnostic," r/Exmormon (2024) [link]