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Agnosticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Clement Dore
Clement Dore
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University
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Extract

People who are agnostics, rather than theists or atheists, frequently defend the claim that their position is more rational than either theism or atheism in the following manner:

It looks [they say] as though there is some reason to believe that God exists (in the form, say, of one of the classical arguments for God's existence); but it also looks as though there is evidence that God does not exist (in the form of the atheistic argument from evil); and whenever there is evidence that a given proposition, p, is true and also evidence that it is false, the most rational thing for anyone who knows that this is the case is to suspend judgement with respect to p. It follows that agnosticism is epistemically preferable to theism and to atheism.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1982 , pp. 503 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

page 503 note 1 The exact words of James are these: ‘Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option which cannot be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passional decision – just like deciding yes or no – and it is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.’ James, William, ‘The Will to Believe’, Essays in Pragmatism (New York: Hafner, 1957), p. 95.Google Scholar

James sometimes says that it is a necessary condition of the theist benefiting from his belief that it be true (ibid. p. 106). But in another place (ibid. p. 108) he maintains that ‘the whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action’, and I take it that here he is claiming that theism results in conduct which benefits both the theist and others; and it is not clear why theism must be true in order to have this consequence (unless having good consequences is ipso facto a sufficient condition of the truth of a belief).

page 504 note 1 I gather that James would say that the question of whether p is true is ‘decided on intellectual grounds’ if there is significantly more reason to believe p than to believe not-p or vice versa.

page 506 note 1 The theist who claims to know that (i) is true and the atheist who claims to know that (2) is true are, in a sense, in as precarious an epistemic position as is the agnostic who claims to know that (3) is true. (This was pointed out to me by John Arthur.) However, neither the contemplated theist nor the contemplated atheist is subject to the dialectical point that the agnostic, who claims that his position is superior because suspending judgement in the envisaged circumstances is the epistemically preferable thing to do, cannot in consistency claim to know that (3) is true.

page 507 note 1 Chisholm, Roderick, Theory of Knowledge, second edition (Englewood Cliffs, Newjersey: Prentice-Hall, 1977). P. 13.Google Scholar