Atheism & Agnosticism: A Reduction of Terms

I’ve been watching a lot of Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews recently, and noticed that one thing which is often brought up is his choice of identification as either agnostic or atheistic, given that he is often viewed as the secular prophet of science in the same vein as Carl Sagan. There is supposed to be a special distinction between the two, but I get the sense this distinction is more clear to people with religious or faith-based rationality than it is to reasonable scientists. So this post is going to examine if there is an appreciable difference between atheism and agnosticism, how a scientist may vary in their definition of each from the definitions of a theosopher, and show that in the end, no-one really believes in each other’s version of god anyway.

Standard Definitions:

The word ‘agnostic’ is a combination of the impartial prefix ‘a-’, the adjectival suffix ‘-ic’ and the Greek root ‘gnostos’, or ‘known’. When it was coined in 1870 by T.H. Huxley, it was in response to the religious practice of Gnosticism, which is that certain divine truths of the universe can become known to humans through their interaction with a god or other spiritual beings. By definition, ‘agnostic’ means ‘the essential nature of the universe cannot be known’, at least it can’t by way of religious or scientific means. Scientifically this means that whenever we reach a frontier of understanding, there is a new frontier that comes into view. Whether or not this changing boundary is infinite, it is clear that at least in Huxley’s time there wasn’t a means science could ever establish essential truth. Similarly, the fact that science directly contradicted the ‘discoveries’ of religion suggested religion was as unaware of the extent of these boundaries as science was.

Atheism is a word derived from the same impartial prefix ‘a-’, the substantive suffix ‘-ism’, and the Greek ‘Theos’, a word used to relate other words to the concept of god. Its origin is much older and harder to trace, with links to French, Latin, and Greek. Atheists, or the ‘godless’, have always existed. By definition it means ‘The doctrine that there is no God’. This is a very definite statement, if you consider it in accordance to the principle of agnosticism above. Stating that something is definitively false is establishing knowledge of the essential truth (and therefore the falsehoods) of the universe. So in the strictest way we could possibly use these two words, agnosticism and atheism are irreconcilably different. One assents an aversion to the absolute and the other declares an absolute. But it would be tedious to resort to that strictness in a world where language occupies the greyest of grey areas.

Advanced Agnosticism:

In our reality, there are many possibilities. A possibility is anything which may be true so long as other possibilities leading to it are also true. We may not always be able to see the entirety of these possibilities, just as we are unlikely to ever see the entirety of truth. The three classes of possibility according to human perspective are ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknowns’, and ‘unknown unknowns’.

Science tends to establish theories according to what possibilities are confirmed to be true (the known knowns) while checking them against information it has yet to determine as true (known unknowns). But it cannot investigate unknown unknowns, for the very simple reason that it does not see that they are there to investigate. Because of this, science will never see enough of the universe to declare anything as absolute truth.

For example:

I make a tuna sandwich and I put it on the kitchen counter. I leave the room for 5 minutes. I come back and find a sandwich on the counter.

Even a simple situation like this is rife with possible true conclusions.

Possibility 1:       The sandwich has remained at rest with no forces acting against it.

Possibility 2:       Someone came into the room and ate my sandwich, then realizing their mistake they made me another one, and left it in place of the old one and left the room.

Possibility 3:       The sandwich has been very gradually eroded by weak external forces such as wind and chemical decomposition, but is otherwise unaltered.

Possibility 4:       I am hallucinating, never having made a sandwich. I am actually imbedded in a complex nerve stimulator which is continuously feeding false sensory information to my brain.

All of these things may be true. Some of them require the comprehensive observation of known unknowns to ensure that all the possibilities first required to determine if the case is an actual possibility are in fact true themselves. And this brings us to the second part of scientific practice, the assignment of probability.

‘Probability’ is a word used to describe possibilities by how many of their conditions are based on other true possibilities in relation to the number of undetermined or ‘unknown’ conditions which can still, in some sense, become known (they ‘may’ be true).

Let’s examine some of the conditions of the possibilities listed above:

Possibility 1:       The sandwich has remained at rest with no forces acting against it.

Conditions:

•          There must have been no forces present in the room at the time.
•          There must have been no chemical reactivity in the area of the sandwich.

Possibility 2:       Someone came into the room and ate my sandwich, then realizing their mistake they made me another one, and left it in place of the old one and left the room.

Conditions:

•          There must be ingredients missing from the kitchen.
•          The sandwich has to take less than 5 minutes to eat & make.
•          Someone else has to have access to the kitchen.

Possibility 3:       The sandwich has been very gradually eroded by weak external forces such as wind and chemical decomposition, but is otherwise unaltered.

Conditions:

•          There must have been weak external forces present in the room at the time.
•          There must not have been strong external forces present in the room at the time.

Possibility 4:       I am hallucinating, never having made a sandwich. I am actually imbedded in a complex nerve stimulator which is continuously feeding false sensory information to my brain.

Conditions:

•          Civilization must have advanced to the point where such technology is possible.
•          I must actually have a physical brain rather than being a freeform floating consciousness.
•          I must have a reason for being unknowingly imbedded in the nerve stimulator.
•          Civilization must, contrary to trend, develop weaker laws concerning consent or law enforcement to have allowed this to happen.

One thing you can notice immediately is that this kind of ‘chain’ of possibilities shifts the investigation of probability from the initial statement to each of its conditional elements. Each of those then have to be considered alongside an array of contradictory or alternate possibilities. For each of these that can’t be determined as true of false to any degree, the probability of the entire chain above that condition of possibility decreases.

So working with probabilities and thus with truth, we tend to assign a range of numerical values. I like to work with percentiles. At the 100% mark, there is ‘absolute truth’, in which all conditions are identified and true. At the 0% mark, there is ‘absolute falsehood’, in which all conditions are identified and false. Until there are no more unknown unknowns – no more conditional possibilities that the scientist is unaware of – then it is impossible to ever assert that there is only one possibility, or even that something is impossible. You cannot determine whether something is possible or impossible by determining its truth, only whether it is probable or improbable. This is a more detailed way of saying, ‘The essential nature of the universe cannot be known’.

We can be 99.9% certain of a particular course of truths due to their probability, and in the sloppy shorthand of language we say that these possibilities are true or that we ‘believe’ in them. We can be 0.001% sure that something is false, or use that same shorthand to declare it ‘impossible’. But a scientist is not particularly worthy of the term if they declare any knowledge complete and immutable.

In conclusion, the scientific method is by nature Agnostic.

Perspectives on Science

If you ask me if I think it’s possible we are all living in a simulation, you may get very excited when I answer ‘yes’. If I tell you it’s also possible the moon is made of cheese, you may think I’m an idiot. This is because you are asking the wrong question, and substituting the data you thought you’d get with your own biases. All possibilities exist.

If you had asked me if I thought it probable that we are all living in a simulation, I would be able to give a much more accurate answer. I would reason that simulations are very likely to be an achievable technology at some point, and once achieved they are likely to be mass-marketed within that reality. So a single reality may hold millions of simulations within it. Thus, there is a greater than million-to-one chance that the world we are living in is a simulation. I would assess that probability at 99.99% or greater. I may, of course, be entirely too certain. Given that there may be an infinite number of parallel realities any numerical advantage achieved by the above million-to-one model could be entirely worthless, and the difference between simulation and actuality would be as arbitrary as those in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

If you asked me if I thought it probable the moon was made of cheese I would say no, the probability sits somewhere around 0.0001% given that cheese largely depends on living creatures to create it, and there is very little sign of life in our solar system, not least on the moon itself. However astronauts can hallucinate and giant space cows may yet be an unknown unknown. So it’s still possible.

In English, it is much harder to convey this uncertainty than it is to declare absolutes. When an ordinary person says ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘maybe’, they are likely to be speaking in an absolute sense. When a scientist says the same, they are ‘rounding’ the percentile of probability. Anything from 0.01% – 25% becomes ‘no’. Anything from 75% – 99.99% becomes ‘yes’. Anything from 25.001% – 74.99% becomes ‘maybe’. There is no effective way to convey the vagaries of this information without also making it absolutely clear that the information posits a certain response, with executive action in a limited time with limited data.

This causes something of a gap in communication, especially when speaking in a mélange of science and doctrine with terms like ‘atheism’. Because ‘doctrine’ or ‘belief’ does not speak in those same terms of probability or possibility. They are the product of a vague, pre-Huxley idea of information.

So when asking someone if they are an atheist, it is best to check:

Do they believe god is a possibility?

Do they believe god is a probability?

In this more general, real-world interpretation, it is possible for a person to be both Agnostic and an Atheist.

So long as they believe god is a possibility, they are agnostic. If they believe the probability of god is remote, well below 1%, then they may also identify as an atheist for all practical and executive purposes.

So long as they believe god is impossible and as such improbable, they are not doing justice to science and they are not agnostic. However they are still, in the most absolute sense of the term, Atheist.

The Gap in Communication

The gap in communication hasn’t been easily bridged, because most people continue to ask the wrong question. This is because the gap is narrow enough that ‘some’ meaning gets across, and what doesn’t is substituted for the knowledge of the listener.

In the case of agnosticism, someone with a general understanding of the term will often believe this means that a person is ambivalent regarding possibilities. So when they hear another person identify as Agnostic, they will assume that that means a person is in the direct center of ‘maybe’, believing in god, aliens and alien gods at around a 50% chance. They tend to be much happier and accepting when someone identifies as agnostic, because they think that person is at very least open to the idea of worship, may pray occasionally, and still has a chance of having a religious experience based on the same evidence that convinced the religious person to pursue their faith.

In the case of Atheism, someone who uses only the strictest sense of the term is seen as a close-minded, amoral individual, which is vastly less preferable to an agnostic. When in actual fact the distinction between the two may be wafer thin. An ‘antignostic’ atheist sits at 0% probability. An agnostic atheist may sit at 0.0001% probability. Effectively and according to the person being identified, there is no real difference. But to the one doing the identifying, they can walk away with a critically inaccurate idea of the person they have just queried.

But there’s a third point in the trend – what about those who ask if you believe in god, and are met with the affirmative? They quite happily declare that you are both sitting at the same 100% affirmation. Reality can look very different, not so much because of the difference in our understanding of atheism and agnosticism, but because of what is meant by ‘god’.

Possibilities:

•          A god can be an omnipotent, omniscient being which lets the universe run its course.
•          A god can be a minor member of a pantheon with influence over some things, who is susceptible to trickery and bribery.
•          A god can be an omnipotent, omniscient being which intervenes in the affairs of human beings.
•          A god can be the greatest potential a person can possibly realize within themselves.
•          A god can be any number of these things while simultaneously hating homosexuals.

Generally, what sets a god apart from the classic, predictable things in the natural world is that it is considered a spiritual abstract. In other words, there is no definitive way to determine one’s probability through an assessment of known knowns and an investigation of unknown knowns. It is, in short, a gnostic concept.

This means that regardless of whether a god exists or not, the ‘proof’ for that existence resides within the mind of the one proving it, and nowhere else. It isn’t a shared thought – we can replicate or copy thoughts from one another, but the thought in your head is not the same as the one in mine. The notion of exactly what a god is – the possibility whose probability is being determined when someone asks “Do you believe in god?” is one specifically catered to the individual asking it. And as such any answer of ‘yes’ is a false positive. People all believe in slightly different gods with slightly different rules, some of which rest lightly on a constructed ‘objective’ of religious teaching, but most of which stem from an individual’s personal relationship with their deity.

Understanding that science deals in percentage probabilities is hugely important to fathoming the remainder of its operation. Without uncertainty, there is no reason to go about looking under rocks or over event horizons. But without a means of also acquiring certainty, there is little reason to employ science to begin with.

It is far more effective to ask what is probable than it is to dwell on infinite possibilities.