1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:04,320 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, 2 00:00:06,240 --> 00:00:09,840 Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren fog obamb Here. It's called the 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:12,720 Speaker 1: rise of the nuns, the rapid increase in the number 4 00:00:12,760 --> 00:00:15,320 Speaker 1: of Americans who claim to have no religious beliefs that 5 00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:18,160 Speaker 1: has taken place in the last decade or so. When 6 00:00:18,239 --> 00:00:21,800 Speaker 1: Pew's Religious Landscape study came out in it showed that 7 00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:24,440 Speaker 1: the percentage of atheists in America had doubled from one 8 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:29,400 Speaker 1: point six in two thousand seven to three point one. Meanwhile, 9 00:00:29,440 --> 00:00:32,239 Speaker 1: the percentage of agnostics had just about doubled from two 10 00:00:32,280 --> 00:00:36,240 Speaker 1: point four to four point Oh but these terms agnostic 11 00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:41,080 Speaker 1: and atheists are often confused. Let's unpack them. People choose 12 00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:47,159 Speaker 1: to identify as religiously agnostic for a variety of personal reasons, philosophical, psychological, theological, 13 00:00:47,280 --> 00:00:50,840 Speaker 1: or even political. But it's not that agnostics are spiritual 14 00:00:50,880 --> 00:00:53,400 Speaker 1: fence sitters, unwilling to state whether they believe in God 15 00:00:53,479 --> 00:00:56,880 Speaker 1: or don't. A true agnosticism, it turns out, has nothing 16 00:00:56,920 --> 00:01:00,840 Speaker 1: to do with belief at all. The term agnosticism was 17 00:01:00,880 --> 00:01:04,120 Speaker 1: first coined by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who lived 18 00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:06,399 Speaker 1: in the mid to late eighteen hundreds. He was a 19 00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:09,680 Speaker 1: fierce defender of Charles Darwin against religious critics who accused 20 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:13,080 Speaker 1: him of denying God's role in creation. As a scientist, 21 00:01:13,160 --> 00:01:17,080 Speaker 1: Huxley didn't concern himself with beliefs. He sought after facts, 22 00:01:17,600 --> 00:01:21,040 Speaker 1: and the fact of any proposition, for example, that God 23 00:01:21,040 --> 00:01:23,759 Speaker 1: created the vast diversity of nature or that it evolved 24 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:27,039 Speaker 1: from natural selection, could only be proven by the evidence. 25 00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:30,920 Speaker 1: Huxley stated that agnosticism itself wasn't a creed or a 26 00:01:30,959 --> 00:01:34,240 Speaker 1: set of beliefs, but a principle, namely quote that it 27 00:01:34,360 --> 00:01:36,199 Speaker 1: is wrong for a man to say he is certain 28 00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:38,920 Speaker 1: of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can 29 00:01:38,920 --> 00:01:44,120 Speaker 1: produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. The word itself 30 00:01:44,160 --> 00:01:47,640 Speaker 1: was a combination of the prefix a meaning against or opposite, 31 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,640 Speaker 1: and gnosticism, which comes from a Greek word meaning knowledge. 32 00:01:52,280 --> 00:01:54,840 Speaker 1: Gnosticism was a religious movement that flourished in the first 33 00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:58,080 Speaker 1: and second centuries CE, and held that, among other things, 34 00:01:58,320 --> 00:02:01,680 Speaker 1: the spirit world was good and the material world was evil. 35 00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:06,240 Speaker 1: And although the principle of agnosticism doesn't exclusively apply to 36 00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:09,120 Speaker 1: the question of God's existence, you can be agnostic about 37 00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:12,440 Speaker 1: any proposition. It's been wrapped up in religion since the beginning. 38 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:16,720 Speaker 1: Huxley wrote a friend in eighteen sixty, I neither affirm 39 00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:19,680 Speaker 1: nor deny the immortality of Man. I see no reason 40 00:02:19,720 --> 00:02:21,880 Speaker 1: for believing it. But on the other hand, I have 41 00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:24,800 Speaker 1: no means of disproving it. Give me such evidence as 42 00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:27,320 Speaker 1: would justify me in believing anything else, and I will 43 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:33,360 Speaker 1: believe that. So that's agnosticism. But what about atheism. Atheism, 44 00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:36,360 Speaker 1: according to its classical definition, is the lack of belief 45 00:02:36,400 --> 00:02:39,359 Speaker 1: in God. Whether that God is the Biblical Judeo Christian 46 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:42,440 Speaker 1: God or some other higher power is a separate issue. 47 00:02:43,040 --> 00:02:46,520 Speaker 1: The opposite of atheism is theism, the belief that God exists. 48 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:50,840 Speaker 1: Atheism and theism are thus both metaphysical claims because they 49 00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:55,720 Speaker 1: as certain answer to a question about the nature of reality. Agnosticism, 50 00:02:55,760 --> 00:02:58,040 Speaker 1: on the other hand, doesn't take a position on whether 51 00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:00,799 Speaker 1: God exists. Instead, it takes a position on whether or 52 00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:04,239 Speaker 1: not we can know if God exists. This is thus 53 00:03:04,280 --> 00:03:08,880 Speaker 1: a physical or epistemological question, epistemology being the study of knowledge. 54 00:03:09,320 --> 00:03:12,240 Speaker 1: Agnosticism claims that we cannot know if God does or 55 00:03:12,280 --> 00:03:15,079 Speaker 1: does not exist because there's no compelling evidence that either 56 00:03:15,120 --> 00:03:19,560 Speaker 1: proposition is true, at least not yet. You might think 57 00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:21,880 Speaker 1: that agnosticism is nothing more than a handy way to 58 00:03:21,919 --> 00:03:24,480 Speaker 1: dodge the question of whether you believe in God. Instead 59 00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:27,880 Speaker 1: of saying yes or no, the agnostic chooses a third position, neither. 60 00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:32,600 Speaker 1: But this is where things can get Harry. We spoke 61 00:03:32,600 --> 00:03:35,840 Speaker 1: with Paul Draper, a professor at Purdue University who specializes 62 00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:38,880 Speaker 1: in the philosophy of religion. He's witnessed his fair share 63 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:42,600 Speaker 1: of arguments between atheists and agnostics. He said, people get 64 00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:45,360 Speaker 1: so angry about this. The atheists will say, you call 65 00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:48,720 Speaker 1: yourself an agnostic, but you're really an atheist. And you 66 00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:52,120 Speaker 1: can see the atheists point at face value. It seems 67 00:03:52,160 --> 00:03:54,800 Speaker 1: there's a razor thin line between saying I don't see 68 00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:57,960 Speaker 1: any evidence that God exists and I don't believe that 69 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:01,120 Speaker 1: God exists. But the friends is that you can be 70 00:04:01,160 --> 00:04:03,840 Speaker 1: an agnostic and an atheist, just as you can be 71 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:07,720 Speaker 1: an agnostic and a believe in Christian or Buddhist or Muslim. 72 00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:11,480 Speaker 1: That's because agnosticism, at its core is separate and unrelated 73 00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:16,359 Speaker 1: to questions of faith. Let's explain, agnostics are nearly always 74 00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:19,520 Speaker 1: lumped together with atheists as a type of nonbeliever. The 75 00:04:19,600 --> 00:04:23,760 Speaker 1: Pew Research Center defined religious nuns as being either atheists, agnostics, 76 00:04:23,839 --> 00:04:27,960 Speaker 1: or not affiliated with any particular religion. But agnosticism isn't 77 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:31,400 Speaker 1: itself a belief system. One could believe on faith that 78 00:04:31,400 --> 00:04:34,400 Speaker 1: God exists, but still ascribed to the agnostic position that 79 00:04:34,400 --> 00:04:38,800 Speaker 1: God's existence cannot be proven by physical evidence or rational arguments. 80 00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:41,680 Speaker 1: Such a person would be an agnostic theist. There's even 81 00:04:41,680 --> 00:04:44,400 Speaker 1: a school of theology called apophatic theology that claims that 82 00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:49,440 Speaker 1: God is inherently unknowable. Thomas A Queenas, the thirteenth century 83 00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:53,960 Speaker 1: philosopher and theologian, wrote, now we cannot know what God is, 84 00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:57,080 Speaker 1: but only what God is not. We must therefore consider 85 00:04:57,080 --> 00:04:59,360 Speaker 1: the ways in which God does not exist, rather than 86 00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:04,839 Speaker 1: the ways in which does. According to Pew, of religious nuns, 87 00:05:04,960 --> 00:05:08,039 Speaker 1: the group that does include atheists and agnostics do believe 88 00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:12,560 Speaker 1: in a higher power. However, while it's technically true that 89 00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:14,800 Speaker 1: you can be both an agnostic and a faithful believer, 90 00:05:15,160 --> 00:05:17,920 Speaker 1: it's perhaps more common for agnostics to doubt the existence 91 00:05:17,960 --> 00:05:21,920 Speaker 1: of God as such. Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and mathematician, 92 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:24,960 Speaker 1: wrote a treatise on agnosticism in which he explained why 93 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:29,359 Speaker 1: the agnostic and atheist positions often overlap. He said. The 94 00:05:29,400 --> 00:05:32,640 Speaker 1: agnostics suspends judgment, saying that they are not sufficient grounds 95 00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:36,080 Speaker 1: either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, 96 00:05:36,120 --> 00:05:39,520 Speaker 1: an agnostic may hold the existence of God, though not impossible, 97 00:05:39,839 --> 00:05:43,040 Speaker 1: is very improbable. He may even hold it so improbable 98 00:05:43,080 --> 00:05:46,279 Speaker 1: that it's not worth considering in practice. In that case, 99 00:05:46,400 --> 00:05:49,560 Speaker 1: he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude maybe 100 00:05:49,640 --> 00:05:52,400 Speaker 1: that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods 101 00:05:52,400 --> 00:05:55,000 Speaker 1: of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that 102 00:05:55,080 --> 00:05:57,039 Speaker 1: Zeus and Pside and Inhera and the rest of the 103 00:05:57,040 --> 00:05:59,400 Speaker 1: Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss 104 00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:02,800 Speaker 1: to find conclude of arguments. An agnostic may think the 105 00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:06,159 Speaker 1: Christian God as improbable as the Olympians. In that case, 106 00:06:06,240 --> 00:06:09,200 Speaker 1: he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists. 107 00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:13,080 Speaker 1: As we said at the beginning, the reasons for identifying 108 00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:16,719 Speaker 1: as agnostic are myriad and different for every person. Draper, 109 00:06:16,720 --> 00:06:19,880 Speaker 1: who has participated in high profile debates with Christian philosophers, 110 00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:25,279 Speaker 1: calls himself a local atheist and global agnostic. He explained, 111 00:06:25,600 --> 00:06:28,440 Speaker 1: I'm an atheist about the all powerful, all knowing, all 112 00:06:28,560 --> 00:06:31,960 Speaker 1: good God, I'm agnostic about God in a broader sense. 113 00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:35,119 Speaker 1: Is there some being that qualifies for the title God? 114 00:06:35,600 --> 00:06:43,240 Speaker 1: There could be such a thing. Today's episode was written 115 00:06:43,240 --> 00:06:45,960 Speaker 1: by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff 116 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:48,039 Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. 117 00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:50,600 Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other philosophical topics, 118 00:06:50,680 --> 00:06:53,360 Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. And 119 00:06:53,440 --> 00:06:55,680 Speaker 1: for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I 120 00:06:55,720 --> 00:06:58,440 Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 121 00:06:58,440 --> 00:07:08,200 Speaker 1: your favorite shows.