On "agnostic theism"

In last Saturday's post," I wrote of a friend who "holds the view that it wasn't possible to be an atheist before [Darwin's discovery of evolution]." Before Darwin, he seemed to contend, "God" was unavoidable in order to explain the existence of seemingly designed creatures [and we cannot avoid giving some explanation or other]. He has denied that at least two of my examples of ancient atheists (Diagoras and Anaxagoras) were really atheists. They were more likely agnostics, he countered. (He didn't say this about Critias, but relied on the historical evidence that Critias was such a bad guy that I should have been embarrassed to offer him in evidence in the first place.)

It occurred to me this morning that my friend's counter move might not help him. After all, I was thinking, agnostics don't believe in god either. So, how was saying that Diagoras and Anaxagoras were agnostics going to help his case? (In fact, he's more than once said that "agnostics are a dime a dozen.") Was he now going to say that, before Darwin, they couldn't have been agnostics either?

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. Agnosticism is a position on knowing ("gnosis"), not on believing. Just because someone holds that it isn't possible to know either that god exists or doesn't, he can still believe either way. In fact, believing in the former (that god exists) is formally known as agnostic theism. An agnostic theist is someone who (to quote the handy Wikipedia), "views that the truth value of certain claims, in particular the existence of god(s), is unknown or inherently unknowable but chooses to believe in God(s) in spite of this." [emphasis mine]

And, you're likely thinking, isn't agnostic atheism also possible? Indeed it is. Back to Wikipedia for a handy, fairly respectable-looking discussion:

One of the earliest explanations of agnostic atheism is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887-1888 (published in 1903 under the title "Agnosticism"):

The atheist may, however, be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one....

If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist...if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist—an agnostic-atheist—an atheist because an agnostic...while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other....

This discovery on my part might be as good an example as I could quickly find of the possibility that my friend and I, in discussing religion without any real expectation of changing the other's mind, might nevertheless gain a better understanding of each other's and our own positions. For I'm now inclined to think that I may more accurately label myself an agnostic atheist than an out-and-out atheist, for I have never claimed that I know there is no god, even though I think that there isn't and am comfortable in saying so. The Wikipedia article just quoted concludes: "Individuals may identify as agnostic atheists based on their knowledge of the philosophical concepts of epistemology, theory of justification, and Occam's razor." Those considerations do indeed play a crucial role in my disbelieving in god.

At this point, I'd like to express my gratitude to Tom Sheepandgoats (aka "Sheepandgoaticus") for engaging me in this discussion, whatever his reply on the merits of my objection to his argument.

As to his reply, he is free, of course, to try to argue that, before Darwin, only "knowing" theism¹ and agnostic theism were possible; that is, that "knowing" atheism² and agnostic atheism were not. (It could be quite interesting to see how he would try to justify that!)

Tom, of course, might find in Flint's clause, "If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God," just the loophole through which to insert the supposed need to explain apparent design as the reason to believe that there is a god. But if he does so, he'll do it realizing that I'll come back once again with my question how deus ex machina is any more than "a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty"³ (to once again quote Webster's appropriate definition of the term).

I trust that we'll hear from Tom on this, and that he'll include an answer to the deus ex machina objection as well....
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1. By which I mean theism that thinks it knows that god exits. Carl Jung, for example, said, "I don't believe God exists; I know it."
2. Ditto, mutatis mutandis.
3. The way turtles were once suggested. One version of the story is given in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which I read during the summer of 1989:

   A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"