As an agnostic, I often think of myself as an explorer of ideas rather than a defender of Truths. Part artist, part amateur cultural anthropologist, and part crackpotologist, there are few things I enjoy more than surveying the realm of ideas and seeing how they are connected regardless of their veracity, their apparent loonieness, or their scientific merit. While I have a personal bias towards scientific thinking and reason, I do realize it’s simply a personal bias partly due to enculturation. On the other hand, I recognize this bias and enjoy stepping outside of it in attempts to see the world from radically different perspectives. I enjoy sometimes changing hats and acting as if I believe this or that so I can find myself seeing the world from within various paradigms.

I have no idea whether this is helpful or if it is a reliable method to find truth or Truth, but I can say that it has added considerable flavor to my life. To use the old cliché’, I like to “question the dominant paradigm” and in doing so, I experience how little I know and the fickleness of knowledge and truth. One of my missions in life has been to unlearn as much as possible and after having been raised in a small Appalachian town of 2000, I had quite a bit to unlearn.

In another discussion here, I quickly admitted that I am not devoid of belief. I believe all kinds of things considered crazy and sane, practical and impractical. Often, if I don’t have an actual belief about something, I act as if I do – this allows me to go to bed at night with the expectation that the sun will be there tomorrow. Will the sun be there tomorrow? I dunno – but it’d probably be uncomfortable questioning such a thing all the time.

I’ve been trying to coin a phrase that’s a variation of a Stephen Roberts quote so that it could apply to agnosticism. Roberts once said, “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” I’ve not found such a fluid way to describe agnosticism to self-described atheists, but it goes something like “We are both doubtful of the claims and assumptions of believers. When you understand why you dismiss the assertions-as-fact of believers, you will understand why I dismiss your’s.” So yeah, I need to work on it so it’s a bit more poetic – any suggestions? ?

In regards to the above, what do I mean by dismissing the assertions-as-facts of believers? In a Descates sort of way, I contend that any claim of certainty, excluding knowledge of oneself, can be questioned. At the top of this list, of course, are assertions about knowledge of gods, the afterlife, etc. Further down the list is whether OJ is really guilty and if eggs are bad for your health. Somewhere else on the list might be whether I’m a Botlzman brain or “brain in a vat” or even in The Matrix. These seem like silly notions, but without the ability to “prove beyond a shadow of a doubt”, we must contend with these possibilities, even when they do not seem intuitive.

As for intuitiveness, there’s no reason to believe that the universe operates in an intuitive way or that it should ever make sense to us. In fact, I find it somewhat surprising that some of it actually does seem to make sense (in certain domains, such as physics and chemistry). Many scientists are now wanting to suggest, though, that deeper levels of reality will likely be entirely unfamiliar to our brains which evolved in savannahs.

On that list of of assertions-as-fact, though there is one entry that feels the most challenging and the most fundamental. Arguing against our blind acceptance of it is one of the most controversial things that could be said to those who embrace rationality. I suggest that we have blind faith, and therefore no reality to believe, in reason and logic itself. Yes, I know that questioning the authority of reason heresy against the church of science. Simply put, we cannot prove that logic and reason are reliable methods to discern Truth.

Certainly if we assume the veracity of logic and reason, we create a foundation on which many things are built – mathematics, science, a physical universe external to ourselves, etc. Logic seems useful. In our normal lives, reason has provided us civilization, cell phones, and Facebook. We see the fruits of reason so we immediately think that it is reliable and accurate. However, this is the same argument any religionist makes – they see the warm fuzzies and the fruits of the world as self-evident examples of the existence of a god.

So, no – I don’t suggest anyone give up their “belief” in science, the scientific method, or reason. However, I do encourage folks to consider that, at the very foundation lies our belief that the universe obeys patterns, reason, and logic.

Agnosticism, to me, is ...