DangerousTalk

Even though the term “agnostic” means without knowledge and pretty much applies to anyone who admits that we can’t know everything, there are some people who insist that agnostic is a category of belief in and of itself. These people insist that atheism is a dogmatic view that someone is 100% certain that there is no god.

These people claim this to be true on the scientific level rather than the general sense. It would be one thing if we could all agree that in a general sense most people are pretty sure that Santa Claus is not real, but can we really say that with 100% certainty on a scientific level? Christians often argue that we would have to know everything and observe that Santa Claus is not part of the set of everything in order to make a 100% certainty claim. This is of course ridiculous.

In the general sense, we can say with reasonable certainty that Santa Claus is not real. No one would or should demand that we must claim to know everything in order to make the claim that Santa Claus is not real. Could you imagine a parent telling their older child that Santa Claus isn’t real and the child then claiming that the parent can’t make such a claim unless they admit to knowing everything?

This has prompted the fictional Atheist Evangelist, Sam Singleton to ask on his very real Twitter, “Do agnostics still put out cookies for Santa?” If there are really people out there who make the claim that we can’t know with certainty that Santa is fictional, then they ought to still put out cookies for Santa because he might exist and we can’t really know for certain.

In a Christmas version of Pascal’s Wager, we can say that it is better to put the cookies out just in case. Yet no one would take such a position for any imaginary being except for God.

For more on the terms “Atheism” and “Agnosticism” check out my Examiner article on the topic.

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Filed under: Agnostism, atheism, culture war, language