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Rex Kerr
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If one is both attentive to empirical scientific studies and to philosophical investigations of the limits of knowledge, then the only rational position is philosophical agnosticism plus pragmatic atheism.

One should be agnostic because one must be agnostic about everything: there simply is no (non-controversial) known path to get completely certaincompletely certain knowledge of any empirical matter (save possibly for the famous "cogito ergo sum", but that's not very useful here).

But the track record of all detailed predictions for every major religion are astoundingly bad (about what you'd expect from observant farmers 3000 years ago wondering about the universe), so there is essentially no evidence in favor and very much evidence against hypotheses that any historical religion is actually meaningfully divinely inspired (including all the bits about afterlife if any, how many gods there are, whether they pay any attention to humans, etc.). Thus, the parsimonious explanation for these religions is not divine intervention but various social and other factors, and it is therefore unlikely that any particular claim is true.

Whether or not this leaves room for some manner of divine being, all the details of what people claim about it/them are probably wrong, so the rational thing to do is to act and reason the same way you would if there wasn't any divine being, hence pragmatic atheism.

That's where informed rationality, applied consistently, takes you, at least if you forbid self-deception and wishful thinking. Whether you call this "agnosticism" or "atheism" seems to me at least to be too subjective a call for one to be clearly the rational choice of title.

(There may be rational reasons for self-deception, e.g. to fit better into a community, or to work around intractable irrational aspects of one's emotional outlook (paralyzing fear of death, for instance).)

(There may also be rational reasons to not bother informing yourself on what is known, e.g. there's more pressing stuff to do.)

If one is both attentive to empirical scientific studies and to philosophical investigations of the limits of knowledge, then the only rational position is philosophical agnosticism plus pragmatic atheism.

One should be agnostic because one must be agnostic about everything: there simply is no known path to get completely certain knowledge of any empirical matter (save possibly for the famous "cogito ergo sum", but that's not very useful here).

But the track record of all detailed predictions for every major religion are astoundingly bad (about what you'd expect from observant farmers 3000 years ago wondering about the universe), so there is essentially no evidence in favor and very much evidence against hypotheses that any historical religion is actually meaningfully divinely inspired (including all the bits about afterlife if any, how many gods there are, whether they pay any attention to humans, etc.). Thus, the parsimonious explanation for these religions is not divine intervention but various social and other factors, and it is therefore unlikely that any particular claim is true.

Whether or not this leaves room for some manner of divine being, all the details of what people claim about it/them are probably wrong, so the rational thing to do is to act and reason the same way you would if there wasn't any divine being, hence pragmatic atheism.

That's where informed rationality, applied consistently, takes you, at least if you forbid self-deception and wishful thinking. Whether you call this "agnosticism" or "atheism" seems to me at least to be too subjective a call for one to be clearly the rational choice of title.

(There may be rational reasons for self-deception, e.g. to fit better into a community, or to work around intractable irrational aspects of one's emotional outlook (paralyzing fear of death, for instance).)

(There may also be rational reasons to not bother informing yourself on what is known, e.g. there's more pressing stuff to do.)

If one is both attentive to empirical scientific studies and to philosophical investigations of the limits of knowledge, then the only rational position is philosophical agnosticism plus pragmatic atheism.

One should be agnostic because one must be agnostic about everything: there simply is no (non-controversial) known path to get completely certain knowledge of any empirical matter (save possibly for the famous "cogito ergo sum", but that's not very useful here).

But the track record of all detailed predictions for every major religion are astoundingly bad (about what you'd expect from observant farmers 3000 years ago wondering about the universe), so there is essentially no evidence in favor and very much evidence against hypotheses that any historical religion is actually meaningfully divinely inspired (including all the bits about afterlife if any, how many gods there are, whether they pay any attention to humans, etc.). Thus, the parsimonious explanation for these religions is not divine intervention but various social and other factors, and it is therefore unlikely that any particular claim is true.

Whether or not this leaves room for some manner of divine being, all the details of what people claim about it/them are probably wrong, so the rational thing to do is to act and reason the same way you would if there wasn't any divine being, hence pragmatic atheism.

That's where informed rationality, applied consistently, takes you, at least if you forbid self-deception and wishful thinking. Whether you call this "agnosticism" or "atheism" seems to me at least to be too subjective a call for one to be clearly the rational choice of title.

(There may be rational reasons for self-deception, e.g. to fit better into a community, or to work around intractable irrational aspects of one's emotional outlook (paralyzing fear of death, for instance).)

(There may also be rational reasons to not bother informing yourself on what is known, e.g. there's more pressing stuff to do.)

Source Link
Rex Kerr
  • 16.2k
  • 1
  • 25
  • 47

If one is both attentive to empirical scientific studies and to philosophical investigations of the limits of knowledge, then the only rational position is philosophical agnosticism plus pragmatic atheism.

One should be agnostic because one must be agnostic about everything: there simply is no known path to get completely certain knowledge of any empirical matter (save possibly for the famous "cogito ergo sum", but that's not very useful here).

But the track record of all detailed predictions for every major religion are astoundingly bad (about what you'd expect from observant farmers 3000 years ago wondering about the universe), so there is essentially no evidence in favor and very much evidence against hypotheses that any historical religion is actually meaningfully divinely inspired (including all the bits about afterlife if any, how many gods there are, whether they pay any attention to humans, etc.). Thus, the parsimonious explanation for these religions is not divine intervention but various social and other factors, and it is therefore unlikely that any particular claim is true.

Whether or not this leaves room for some manner of divine being, all the details of what people claim about it/them are probably wrong, so the rational thing to do is to act and reason the same way you would if there wasn't any divine being, hence pragmatic atheism.

That's where informed rationality, applied consistently, takes you, at least if you forbid self-deception and wishful thinking. Whether you call this "agnosticism" or "atheism" seems to me at least to be too subjective a call for one to be clearly the rational choice of title.

(There may be rational reasons for self-deception, e.g. to fit better into a community, or to work around intractable irrational aspects of one's emotional outlook (paralyzing fear of death, for instance).)

(There may also be rational reasons to not bother informing yourself on what is known, e.g. there's more pressing stuff to do.)