In this article we will look at who agnostics and atheists are and how they differ from each other.
In the modern world, positions are quite common that in various ways oppose the existence of certain religions or simply do not adhere to them. They are similar to each other, but not identical. The words atheism and agnosticism, as well as atheist and agnostic, evoke a number of different associations for most people. But ordinary citizens often have a misunderstanding of the problem, which is the main difference between the adherents of these two concepts.
Who is an agnostic
An agnostic is a person who believes that it is impossible to know a complete and objective picture of the world, as well as its laws. After all, people have no way of knowing for sure whether there is heaven and hell, life after death and other supernatural things.
Agnostics are often associated with religion, but their philosophy is much broader and covers other areas, incl. and science. They believe that some truths cannot be comprehended due to the limitations of human consciousness, while others will be revealed to man only when new theories and facts appear and are proven. For example, F. Magellan's trip around the world confirmed that the Earth is indeed round.
Agnostic and atheist - what's the difference?
Many people confuse the terms “agnostic” and “atheist” with each other. But how are they different?
An atheist is a person who denies any existence of a higher power and claims that there is no God. He does not just assume, but believes in its absence, just like any believer in his religion.
But an agnostic believes that a person is not capable of understanding the world as a whole, therefore he cannot be convinced of the existence of God or of his absence. He questions any position.
Unlike an atheist, who does not change his formed views, an agnostic has an open mind. He is ready to accept new truths if there are compelling reasons for this.
They also have different attitudes towards the existence of the human soul. The atheist completely renounces this part of himself, while the agnostic feels its presence, although both cannot prove it.
Who is it
Difference between major and minor
The incomprehensibility of the term agnostic and who it is can be explained in simple words as the presence of constant human doubts about the truth of the facts. This is someone who will not believe someone else's experience or views without objective, scientific evidence provided. This is materialism, but at the same time, the agnostic does not deny the presence of the spiritual world and the influence of energies on human development, he only waits for real evidence before asserting this. Such people are characterized by high intelligence, which makes them constantly doubt, analyze the universe in its entirety and each time come to the conclusion of how small human capabilities are, as well as life expectancy, in order to really comprehend what is happening in world processes at the global level (and this is even necessary to explain the functioning of our cells).
Agnostics deny only the mystical side of faith and religion, while supporting its influence on the value-semantic and spiritual space of the individual, on the formation of its internal structure, as well as the regulation of actions. An agnostic views any religion not as a set of beliefs and statements about the existence of the invisible world, but as a model for building life, a certain set of norms and rules, guided by which a person continues his path. This applies to any information that is not accepted as a starting point, because any knowledge changes the subjective picture of the world and then the personality undergoes changes, and under these changes there is also a transformation of interpretation. As a result, through many layers of subjective perception, there is no real idea of anything, which is what the agnostic is talking about.
The only religions that can bypass agnosticism in its critical attitude are Buddhism and Taoism, since in them there is no interpretation of the person of God, but only a set of proposed rules for building one’s life. Faith, as a guide to the optimal construction of internal ethical standards, is quite suitable for an agnostic, so if they are carried away by some kind of faith, then usually these are teachings about energies, interaction and the like, where there is no personification.
History of the term
To understand who an agnostic is in simple terms, it is worth understanding where this term came from.
At the end of the 18th century, philosophers and scientists Herbert Spencer, Hamilton, George Berkeley and David Hume developed a theory whose ideas were opposed to metaphysical philosophy. They believed that exploring the world through subjective understanding of metaphysical phenomena was wrong. They found confirmation of their views in the works of ancient philosophers, skeptics and sophists.
And in 1876, the English biologist Thomas Huxley, at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society, introduced the term “agnosticism” into science, laying the foundation for a separate philosophical movement. Thus, agnostics even had their own sign, which included a model of the movement of atoms.
Atheism is not just disbelief...
According to Wikipedia, this concept was first mentioned in ancient Greek manuscripts of the 5th century BC. Four centuries later, the Roman politician, Stoic philosopher and eminent orator Cicero took the Greek adjective ἄθεoς (“denying God”) and made it a Latin transliteration.
This is how the word “atheos” appeared, which in classical sources was used to mean “a/anti-theistic,” that is, “rejecting the gods.”
Over time, this term ceased to be unambiguous and, in the course of the strengthening of religious fundamentalism, acquired new semantic shades.
Thus, the concept of atheism could be used in a variety of contexts, and a number of negative qualities were attributed to atheists themselves, including heterogeneous phenomena:
- freethinking (or religious freethinking);
- heresy (how is that?), paganism;
- doubt in the existence of gods and any supernatural forces;
- wickedness, depravity;
- lack of moral codes;
- denial or non-recognition of the gods of the dominant cult;
- God-fighting, violating the will of the Lord;
- conscious dissent as spiritual resistance to the only correct ideology.
That's how negative the vector of expressive-semantic coloring of this word was! And this trend continued until the Renaissance (what is this?).
These were times of growth, when science began to actively develop, and philosophy (what is this?) began to acquire more materialistic features, and civil society finally outgrew its “puberty period” (what is this?) and entered the phase of maturity.
And only at the height of the ideological era (somewhere at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries) did the attitude towards atheism change, and the scales of “public reason” tipped towards rationalism (what is this?) and impartial criticism of the religious worldview.
At the same time (in addition to the progressive part of society), in the average secular stratum there were more and more of those who realized that the only criterion and means of knowing a person and the world around him can only be common sense. That is, an appeal to the intellect and the practical use of reason.
The essence of agnosticism
The term “agnosticism” itself comes from the Greek “agnostos”, which means “unidentifiable”. It is impossible to simply believe or not believe in something if there is no objective evidence for it.
Thomas Huxley said that an agnostic can only rely on reliable facts; in their absence, he will not assert anything.
Also, an agnostic will never impose any statements on others, presenting them as truth, if he cannot provide evidence that this is really true.
Agnostic principles
The philosophy of agnosticism is based on 5 principles, which are adhered to by supporters of this direction:
- a person is not able to objectively understand the world around him;
- it is impossible to provide proof of the existence of God, just as it is impossible to prove his absence;
- there is no point in dividing the world strictly into black and white, the concepts of “good” and “evil” were invented by man, and, therefore, subjective;
- knowledge that humanity is convinced of today and accepts as absolute truth will be refuted over time;
- It is possible that in the future such facts and events will appear, thanks to which it will be possible to make an unambiguous answer about the existence of higher powers.
Mikhail Prokhorov. “I believe in universal human values”
Answering Posner’s signature question, the famous businessman honestly said: “I don’t think in the subjunctive mood. I am an atheist, so in this case I cannot answer on the merits.”
Mikhail Prokhorov in the Posner program
The former presidential candidate calls himself a classic native of the atheistic environment of the USSR: “I was brought up in the Soviet Union and we had a very good family. Like many millions of our citizens, we were brought up in an atheistic environment. But this does not mean at all that I do not believe. I believe in universal human values."
Prokhorov also notes that the activities of the church absolutely do not fit into his ideas about universal human values: “In any society, I quite calmly say that I consider the Russian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Church) to be a commercial semi-criminal structure, and our patriarch to be anyone: a businessman, a lobbyist, but not at all ambassador of spirituality."
Famous agnostics
Famous agnostics who adhered to the views of this philosophical doctrine include Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper and Bertrand Russell.
Immanuel Kant, known for his idea of the “thing in itself,” believed that a person knows the entire world around him indirectly, only through the senses. Therefore, something that does not affect people in any way is impossible to recognize and understand.
David Hume believed that human knowledge is based on his sensory experience, so it will not be possible to draw unambiguous conclusions about reality.
In a later period, already in the 20th century, the philosopher Karl Popper described the principle of falsification. Although the truth cannot be known, by discarding false information, one can get closer to it. This is what helps drive progress.
In the modern world there are also famous personalities who call themselves agnostics. For example, American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. He believes that one should not label people based on their views, because this forces one to attribute to them even those conclusions of philosophy with which they do not agree. Therefore, it is better to consider yourself not an atheist, but an agnostic, ready to accept evidence of the existence of God if it appears.
Epistemology, its basic principles. Subject and object of cognition, models of their interaction
Cognition is a socially organized form of human mental and creative activity aimed at acquiring and developing reliable knowledge about the world. Human cognitive activity is inseparable from thinking, will, memory and emotions. It can be viewed as the process of generating life experience, the mental activity of the subject, including faith, faith, truth and error.
The philosophical theory of knowledge is called epistemology (from the ancient Greek words “knowledge” and “teaching”). In ancient times, epistemology was considered a special field of philosophy, which was engaged in the analysis of the main problems of knowledge and cognition
It is important to highlight two important ideas that had a fundamental influence on the further development of philosophical doctrines of knowledge. These are: a) the idea of the activity of the mind and the creative nature of knowledge, expressed by Plato (later developed in German classical philosophy); 6) the idea of correspondence of human knowledge to the world of natural objects and things, developed by Aristotle and subsequently used as the fundamental basis of naive realistic and materialistic concepts of knowledge
The main problem of epistemology is the substantiation of the fundamental possibility of obtaining true knowledge about the world (adequate reproduction by the subject of the essential features of reality). Its simplified formulation is often used - “the problem of the principle of recognition of the world.” Depending on one or another solution to this problem, three positions were distinguished in classical philosophy: epistemological optimism (gnosticism), skepticism, agnosticism.
Most of modern epistemology is based on Gnosticism and is based on the following principles:
Dialectics, which implies the need to approach the problem of knowledge dialectically (i.e. from the point of view of development), to use laws, categories, principles of dialectics;
Historicism, i.e. consideration of all subjects and phenomena in the context of their historical origin and formation
Practice - recognition of practice, i.e. human activity to transform the surrounding world and oneself, as the main way of cognition
Cognition - to be convinced of the possibility of knowledge;
Objectivity - recognize the independent existence of objects and phenomena that do not depend on will and consciousness;
Activities for the creative representation of reality;
The specificity of truth is the search for individual and reliable truth under certain conditions.
The main problem area of epistemology has traditionally included the status and role of the subject of cognition, the structure of the cognitive process, the problem of truth, forms and methods of cognition, etc. The initial structure of the cognitive process is represented by subject-object dependence (subject - from Latin “to be at the base”, object - from Latin "opposite"). Classical epistemology from the very beginning proceeded from the basic premise that the main task of epistemology is to show the cognitive abilities of the subject, which enable him to obtain true knowledge about the object.
How agnostics see the world - examples
A person who can say to himself: “I am an agnostic” sees the world as new knowledge endlessly opening up to him. He believes that if any evidence or theory can be refuted and proven invalid over time, then the same can happen with any other knowledge.
For example, people have long been convinced that the Earth is flat and rests on a turtle and three whales. This was a completely plausible theory, because everyone, looking around, noticed that the plane was really flat. And the stories of travelers that there is an edge in the sea, over which the water flows far down, only confirmed the guesses.
But over time, the theory of a flat Earth was destroyed, people saw evidence of the spherical shape of the planet and believed in it. The previous knowledge, which was believed in for a long time, has collapsed.
It's the same story with matter. It is generally accepted that the entire surrounding reality consists of the smallest particles - atoms. And no one doubts this. But as soon as scientists were able to create a more powerful microscope and see that the atom was made up of even smaller particles, the theory collapsed.
It turns out that you can change your beliefs ad infinitum. It is only a matter of time and technological progress.
