Let's ruffle some atheist feathers.
For all practical purposes, the statements "I disbelieve god exists" and "I believe God doesn't exist" are basically the same statement & any differences between them are purely semantic and don't change the overall meaning from any practical perspective. Further to this, "I know God doesn't exist" is, again, for all practical purposes, the same as saying "I believe God doesn't exist". Any differences between the above statements are epistemological mind games that have no practical bearing on our daily lives & from what I've seen in the atheist Twitter community, the main purpose of these games is to avoid the burden of proof.
Now here's the rub, "There's no evidence" is good enough for all practical purposes. "There's no evidence for dragons", is generally accepted as good enough for most to justify saying, "I know dragons don't exist" & it's good enough to keep others from dragging them into an epistemological pissing match over certainty of knowledge. Then you add the fact that there are tons of great arguments for the non existence of gods & suddenly you're well beyond good enough. It's only with the subject of gods that we are we suddenly forced to concern ourselves with tedious epistemological arguments, most of which border on solipsism, around the certainty of our knowledge.
Most "agnostic atheists" I've spoken with will say they are 99.9% certain no gods exist, but seem irrationally concerned about that 0.1% chance they may be wrong. Well, I'm 99.9% certain the earth will be spinning tomorrow, yet few people would insist I be agnostic about that. It's generally accepted as being ok to say, "I know the earth will be spinning tomorrow"? Yes, technically speaking, there's a chance it won't be (by any number of possible reasons), but is it worth concerning myself over it? Is it worth being agnostic about or lacking belief it will keep spinning? Especially if all I'm doing is trying to avoid any burden of proof that it will?
Many "agnostic atheists" are willing to go further & say they are 100% certain all gods ever worshipped by man to date don't exist, & leave the 99.9% certainty only to the chance some unknown, not yet described god-like figure might exist. To this I reply, the unknown is unknown & there is an infinite number of things we can conceive of that we don't know or can't prove if they exist that has no practical bearing on our knowledge base. This sounds like it should be obvious, but apparently it's not.
I think most atheists would agree there's actually a greater chance of the earth not spinning tomorrow than there is of any god, currently or previously worshipped or an as of yet unknown god-like being ever to be proven. So it boggles my mind as to why so many seem to concern themselves over this infinitesimal chance some god might actually exist. If it turns out some kind of god exists, you admit you were wrong, adjust your knowledge base & carry on. That's practical.
For all practical purposes, 99.9% = 100%. There's no practical or rational reason we should ever concern ourselves with such a tiny chance we may be wrong. There is no practical or rational reason why anyone should be scared of making a knowledge claim when you are 99.9% certain gods don't exist—because on most subjects, most people easily & willingly claim knowledge, often with less than 99.9% certainty, and this includes scientists.
So, if you want to partake in epistemological mental masturbation games to make yourself feel intellectually superior, be my guest, everyone needs a hobby. I have kids to raise, a job to attend to & life to live. I can no longer be bothered to argue about laughably remote odds that have no practical effect on my life & are primarily used as ways to distract & deflect from the many, many great arguments that no gods exist.
So no, I'm not an agnostic atheist, nor am I a gnostic atheist, I'm a Practical atheist.
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Here's a chart to help people understand what is meant by "gnostic atheist" & "agnostic atheist".
For anyone that wants to try & use Pascal's Wager to argue the odds:
I think there is a difference between pragmatically knowing something and logically (semantically? I'll use semantically) knowing something.
ReplyDeleteRather than reaching a tipping point where you consider the probabilities to be good enough to use the phrase "I know God doesn't exist," I feel it is better to say that you are using the term "know" in two separate ways. Otherwise, the definition of knowledge is laid open to situations where people feel they are justified in promoting their belief in a proposition, that has been reasonably demonstrated to be false, as knowledge.
When discussing knowledge, "truth" must form part of its definition. This is because when we discover a proposition is false, we immediately drop the "know" qualifier. For instance, I "know" the earth is flat is a nonsense statement, as my conclusion is false. No matter how sound my reasoning nor how great my conviction, we cannot say that I "know" this conclusion (It would perhaps be better to say that I believe I know, or I strongly believe). If we do not include truth in the definition, then knowledge could be defined as passionate belief in a proposition supported by a method that led us to our conclusion.
You mention in your post that you don't have 100% certainty that gods don't exist. Certainty, in my opinion, shouldn't be a requirement of knowledge. Instead, what is important is that you believe a proposition to be true, and then reach the correct conclusion (the truth) through an appropriate method. If this is satisfied, then you semantically "know".
The semantic meaning of knowledge, and whether it is acquired or not, never changes. Once something is known semantically, it is known for eternity. However, an individual may still pragmatically claim knowledge when they believe a proposition is true, when they use a logically sound method to reach a conclusion and when that conclusion is pragmatically true.
In this respect, you can say that in a pragmatic sense, you know that God doesn't exist. If at a later date it transpires that you were wrong, it isn't the case that you once had knowledge and then lost it, because this makes no sense when considering truth as a definitional criteria. Instead, you were mistaken in your knowledge (you believed you knew).
You've given me some food for thought.
ReplyDeleteHowever, may I share my reason for drawing a distinction between "don't believe" and "know it"?
When I was a theist -- and I was, for many years -- I *knew*. I was certain. The universe didn't make sense to me any other way. It took more than two decades for me to wash my mind of that, to retrain my thinking, to learn that doubting was okay and wouldn't send me to Hell. After doing so, I grew a very healthy hesitancy to be *that* certain of anything, ever again. The thing I had been more certain about than anything else turned out to be wrong.
So forgive me if I insist on simply "don't believe in gods" as the definition of my atheism. Yes, it means that I behave as if I *know* there aren't gods, but in my mind I doubt I will ever convince myself to be that certain of anything ever again.
If I buy a lottery ticket today, there's a much, much lower chance that I'll win the jackpot than 99.9% but I wouldn't say I 'know' I won't win, because I don't. People win all the time. I'd just say it's unlikely.
ReplyDeleteThere is a very rich philosophical history regarding the difference between true knowledge and that which we infer through our senses and brains, and much of that is lost for all intents when we adjust definitions to exclude it.
When it comes to cosmological hypotheses, almost all of them are generally improbable (due to a lack of evidence favoring any specific one), but one of the conceivable hypotheses is probably true (whether it's knowable by us or not), so saying I 'know' it's not any specific one doesn't seem reasonable to me and I think it's specifically why we have qualifying terms to better describe the degree of certainty that we hold.
I'd also echo Wil's point. Some people believe that not only is true knowledge possible to obtain through our senses, but that they hold true knowledge regarding either god(s) existing or not existing. One of the main purposes of terms like atheist and agnostic is to describe our beliefs so I think it follows that if many people do believe they hold true knowledge regarding god(s), and we don't, it's a useful distinction to describe our beliefs in that way.
There is, of course, a problem regarding these terms in popular atheistic circles today, where they seem to far more commonly spark huge semantic arguments than actually be informative, and because of this, I generally don't even take the time to tell people what I identify as and why. I usually just tell them how probable I think the propositions are and leave it at that. It takes about 10 more words but I tend to avoid a long semantic debate in exchange. :p
Sorry, I meant there's a much higher chance I'll not win the jackpot than 99.9% in the first paragraph.
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