Concept
Agnostic atheism
Overview
Agnostic atheism, also called atheistic agnosticism, is a position combining atheism with agnosticism. In this usage, an agnostic atheist does not believe that any deity exists, but also does not claim to know that no deity exists, or holds that the existence or nonexistence of deities is unknown or unknowable.
The relationship between the terms depends on how atheism and agnosticism are defined. Atheism may refer broadly to the absence of theistic belief, but in philosophy of religion it is often used more narrowly for the proposition that God does not exist. Agnosticism may refer to suspension of judgment, or to the epistemological view that neither theism nor atheism is known. Under the broader belief-and-knowledge distinction, agnosticism can be either atheistic or theistic because atheism and theism concern belief, while agnosticism concerns knowledge. Under narrower philosophical definitions, however, atheism and agnosticism may be treated as distinct or mutually exclusive positions.
The distinction has been discussed by writers including Robert G. Ingersoll, Robert Flint, Bertrand Russell, Antony Flew, George H. Smith, and Richard Dawkins. Modern accounts have often framed the position in terms of evidential standards, the burden of proof, negative atheism, or probabilistic degrees of belief rather than as a simple claim of certainty or denial.
Agnostic atheism may be contrasted with agnostic theism, the view that one or more deities exist while their existence or nonexistence is unknown or cannot be known.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Again, it is by no means a truism, and is in fact false, that we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know. The word 'know' is here used in two different senses. (1) In its first use it is applicable to the sort of knowledge which is opposed to error, the sense in which what we know is _true_, the sense which applies to our beliefs and convictions, i.e. to what are called _judgements_. In this sense of…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
States what Agnostic atheism is; the author is tied to Agnostic atheism in the knowledge graph.
In this sense a man is a “free thinker” if he is not a Christian or a Mussulman or a Buddhist or a Shintoist or a member of any of the other bodies of men who accept some inherited orthodoxy. In Christian countries a man is called a “free thinker” if he does not decidedly believe in God, though this would not suffice to make a man a “free thinker” in a Buddhist country. I do not wish to minimize the importance of…
Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda
States what Agnostic atheism is; the author is tied to Agnostic atheism in the knowledge graph.
This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the world has considered Atheists, have always done. These particulars are important, because they show that my father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than…
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
States what Agnostic atheism is.
Related ideas
- Graham Oppy
- Belief
- Antony Flew
- Atheism
- George H. Smith
- A. J. Ayer
- Philosophy of religion
- Knowledge
- Richard Dawkins
- Freethought
- Thomas Henry Huxley
- Anthony Kenny
- Bertrand Russell
- Deity
- The God Delusion
- Proposition
- Agnosticism
- Epistemology
- Theological noncognitivism
- Theodore Drange
- Agnostic theism
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Agnosticism.