Gospel & Universe 🏛 Skeptics & Stoics

Not Quite Skeptical 2

Agnostics use words like change and doubt to suggest the only universal constants they’re aware of. Even then, they’d push the paradox everything changes except change back on itself, arguing that change itself might be subject to change and thus become unchanging. Perhaps there does exist a constant or universal Truth that transcends change.

Some of the favourite phrases of agnostics are Who knows? Why not? and What do I know? The 16th century French skeptic Michel de Montaigne famously wrote the maxim Que sais-je? or What do I know? on the rafters of the library in his chateau. It’s now an axiom in universities that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. I’ll return to Montaigne on several occasions (especially on the page Montaigne in the chapter ♒️ A River Journey), yet here I want to note that Montaigne’s early French skepticism anticipates what in the 19th century Thomas Henry Huxley termed agnosticism.

While skepticism and agnosticism both highlight the notion of doubt, contemporary skepticism is more like a method (like the scientific method) in that it applies everywhere. Agnosticism on the other hand is both a method of doubting and a philosophy or system of doubt that operates between two specific epistemological systems: theism and atheism. In his 1889 essay, “Agnosticism,” Huxley appears to see it differently, using method and the good to differentiate agnosticism from creed:

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, "Try all things, hold fast by that which is good." It is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

I’d argue that this way of defining agnosticism makes it sound as if it were synonymous with skepticism, and also introduces the odd moral component of “that which is good.” The term agnosticism comes from a skeptical reaction to gnosticism, which is a theological and mystical belief in the hidden knowledge of a higher truth. Doubting such a higher truth is a skeptical act, yet the systemic doubt about all such religious truths is agnosticism. Otherwise, one would have to say that a writer such as Montaigne was a skeptic when he doubted certain religious ideas but not a skeptic when it came to believing in God. But we don’t say this; we say that Montaigne was a skeptic. It would be more consistent to say that Montaigne was a skeptic because he was skeptical about many things, but he was also a theist when it came to believing in God. The term agnostic helps us get at a more clear definition of Montaigne’s belief system: he was both a skeptic and a theist. He wasn’t an agnostic because while he doubted widely he still maintained a deep belief in God.

Huxley attempts to differentiate agnosticism from creed, yet it might be more consistent to say that agnosticism uses skepticism all the time and that it is, paradoxically, the creed of doubt. Toward the end of his paragraph Huxley comes around to something of the sort — and in so doing revisits his statement that “Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed” when he uses the phrase, “the agnostic faith.” The opening of his paragraph is also odd in that he uses “that which is good” to define skepticism or agnosticism. His use of such a moralistic phrase may be a necessary sop to late 19th century critics who feared that doubt would weaken Christian morality. Sartre also took up this question in his 1946 essay, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” at a post-War time when many feared the moral implications of meaninglessness, absurdity, and alienation. Huxley may have wanted to hint at such an argument, although in the immediate context he might have simply asserted that being both rigorous and open-minded is a good way to go about things.

The points Huxley makes further along in his 1889 essay are easier to see in terms of contemporary agnosticism:

The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproven today may be proven by the help of new discoveries to-morrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction. Agnostics who never fail in carrying out their principles are, I am afraid, as rare as other people of whom the same consistency can be truthfully predicated. But, if you were to meet with such a phœnix and to tell him that you had discovered that two and two make five, he would patiently ask you to state your reasons for that conviction, and express his readiness to agree with you if he found them satisfactory.

Skeptics and agnostics operate in very similar ways, yet the conclusions of the skeptics are varied in terms of theology, whereas the religious conclusions of the agnostic always come back to doubt — or else the agnostic would become a theist or atheist. The noun skeptic is easy to use as an adjective, skeptical, which makes the wider import of skepticism more obvious. While one can say, “I’m agnostic about his political platform,” it sounds odd, since agnosticism generally operates between the poles of belief and disbelief and within a philosophical context, where epistemology (the study of meaning) comes into play. It would sound far more appropriate to say, “I’m skeptical about his political platform.”

Take another example: the skeptic might believe in the divinity of Jesus yet be skeptical that he walked on water. Agnostics, on the other hand, would be skeptical of the miracle and also of the divinity — because they always doubt the claims of theism and atheism. They would keep their minds open to divinity and miracle, but they wouldn’t believe them unless they found reasons that were satisfactory to them (to use Huxley’s word above). They would need to find some historical proof or some inner mystical ‘proof’ that was satisfactory to them. If they found such ‘proof,’ they would no longer be agnostics.

Skeptics can doubt and yet believe at the same time, while agnostics always come back to doubt, especially in regard to the universal claims of theists and atheists. For agnostics, doubt pervades or transcends any belief system they might experiment with or entertain. In this sense, doubt is a constant of sorts, rather than an insecure or doubtful position. Hence Byron’s paradoxical line, “I doubt if doubt itself be doubting.”

For agnostics, doubt about our selves and the universe is a real experience, and experience is undeniable. To rework Descartes’ famous phrase I think, therefore I am, agnostics would say, I am, therefore I think, therefore I doubt. But I don’t doubt that I am.

Agnostics might ponder extreme skepticism (which argues that we can’t know for sure that we and the world exist), yet they follow a more practical approach, giving tentative credence to the relative world and to the reality of our senses. Byron puts this humorously when he mocks platonic love and points instead to the obvious: “besides all these pretences / To Love, there are those things which words name senses” (Don Juan 9.74). In an 1819 letter, Keats says more directly that “axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.”

What’s true of abstraction and sense in Keats and Byron is true of abstraction and identity in Huxley. In 1860 he says that to accept the truth of one’s self is one thing, but to tie down its meaning is a completely different thing:

That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.

Huxley’s phrase “mere verbal subtleties” makes sense coming from the arch-defender of Darwin, especially when we consider that he’s writing one year after the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859). The epistemological implications of evolution dwarf any momentary debate about the existence of the self or the world. Yet once evolution’s staggering power is recognized, Huxley’s phrase doesn’t seem to leave much room for rigorous or poetic explorations of ontology, the study of being. Floundering is one thing; imaginative exploration and insightful articulation are two different things. Still, agnostics generally agree with Huxley that it’s unnecessary to endlessly question whether or not we exist, and whether or not the objects we see exist. Our existence can be verified by our family history, language, culture, and personality, and by simply being aware of our breath and the limbs of our body. The objects around us are likewise verified every time we open a door or bump our shins on a coffee table.

Agnostics don’t spend much time on highly theoretical ontological debates. Instead, they argue that neither of the following two questions can be answered: 1. Does the self (which isn’t debatable) have a soul? and 2. Is the natural world (which also isn’t debatable) governed by a greater Power? Humans are more or less divided in answering these two questions: theists say Yes, and atheists say No. The way we answer these questions can start wars, divide continents, and turn children against their parents. In other words, it isn’t merely an idle exercise to get around this dichotomy. But agnostics do get around it, at least to some degree, by admitting that they don’t have an answer to either question. It’s hard to close churches or distort evolutionary theory when you’re sympathetic to both religion and science.

Agnostics simply say I don’t know when asked about the existence of deities or soul. For some people, these three little words are as hard to say as I love you. As I explore in my chapter, ❤️ Three Little Words, it shouldn’t be hard to admit that you don’t know. In “Why I am Not an Atheist,” Anthony Kenny writes, “A claim to knowledge needs to be substantiated; ignorance need only be confessed.” Such a confession frees the mind from the demands and doctrines of those who press a gospel on it — be it a gospel of religion or a gospel of atheism.

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Next: Nor Quite Stoic 1: Meditations

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