Are you an agnostic or an atheist? This is a question which faces many nonbelievers. Too often, this question is predicated upon a misunderstanding of both terms - many people imagine that agnostics sit on the fence about whether gods exist or not while atheists deny their existence.

In the December 2004 / January 2005 issue of Free Inquiry, Paul Edwards writes:

Russell wavered between calling himself an agnostic and describing himself as an atheist. He evidently did not attach too much importance to this distinction, but he made it clear that if he was to be classified as an agnostic, it would have to be in a sense in which an agnostic and an atheist are "for practical purposes, at one."

In the television interview mentioned earlier, the interviewer asked Russell, "Do you think it is certain that there is no such thing as God or simply that it is just not proven?" "No," Russell answered, "I don't think it is certain there is no such thing — I think it is on exactly the same level as the Olympic gods, or the Norwegian gods; they also may exist, the gods of Olympus and Valhalla. I can't prove they don't, but I think that the Christian God has no more likelihood than they had. I think they are a bare possibility."

He explained his views more fully in an interview published in Look magazine in 1953. An agnostic, in any sense in which he can be regarded as one, Russell said, "may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice."

Russell's position here is probably shared by most atheists. They don't believe in the existence of any gods and, insofar as they allow for the remote possibility that some sort of god exists, it's about as strong of a possibility as the existence of the ancient Greek or Norse gods. The existence of such gods doesn't appear to be logically impossible, but it also doesn't appear to be empirically likely, either. Lots of things are possible but not plausible or likely.

The atheistic position is difficult for many people to accept — they are convinced that their god exists, but they are no more or less convinced of this than people used to be convinced of the existence of Greek and Norse gods. Theists today would probably regard belief in those gods as absurd, but why is it any more absurd than their own beliefs? Frankly, it's not — their beliefs are more common right now, but that doesn't make them more rational or justified.

 

Read More:

• Atheism 101
• What is Atheism?
• Who Are Atheists?
• Agnosticism 101
• Defining Atheism