On Agnosticism

"Agnostic" has become the sophisticated person's way of discussing religion, a fancy word deployed in social conversations to suggest intellectual depth and mysterious complexity. People use it to position themselves as more thoughtful than simple believers and more open-minded than outright atheists.

But this fashionable agnosticism reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what belief actually is and exposes a peculiar hypocrisy in how we talk about knowledge and certainty.

The truth is that all believers are agnostic by definition. 

That's precisely why they believe rather than know. 

Belief only exists in the absence of certainty, it's what fills the gap when knowledge is unavailable. 

You don't believe things you know to be true, and you don't believe things you know to be false. 

Belief operates exclusively in the space between knowledge and ignorance.

Consider how scientists approach uncertain questions. They don't say "I believe in evolution" or "I believe in gravity." 

They say "The evidence supports evolution" or "Gravity is well-established by observation." When scientists encounter questions they cannot answer definitively, they say "I don't know" or "The data is inconclusive." 

They reserve belief for personal matters outside their professional domain.

This reveals belief's actual nature: it's not a sophisticated intellectual position but an admission of uncertainty coupled with a choice to act as if something were true despite lacking definitive evidence. 

Believers believe precisely because they don't know, because certainty is absent and they've chosen to bridge that gap with faith rather than suspend judgment.

And this is commendable, I am not knocking it down by any means.

The person who claims to be agnostic about God's existence while treating religious believers as if they possess some kind of certainty that the agnostic lacks has misunderstood the situation entirely. 

The believer is already operating from uncertainty, that's what makes belief necessary in the first place.

This creates an absurd social dynamic where people use "agnostic" to suggest they're more intellectually honest than believers, when agnosticism is simply belief's foundational condition. 

The real hypocrisy emerges when people who identify as agnostic act as if this represents a more rational position than belief or disbelief. Agnosticism, properly understood, is the precondition that makes belief necessary. 

You cannot be agnostic about things you know, and you don't need belief about things you know.

Religious believers understand this intuitively, which is why they speak of faith rather than certainty, and why religious traditions emphasize believing despite doubt rather than claiming absolute knowledge. 

The entire concept of faith presupposes uncertainty, it's meaningless otherwise.

The person who says "I'm agnostic about God" while implying this makes them more reasonable than someone who says "I believe in God" has missed the point entirely. Both statements acknowledge the same fundamental uncertainty about God's existence. 

The difference is that one person chooses to act on that uncertainty, the believer, while the other chooses to express his uncertainty fancifully.

So the next time someone tells you they are agnostic, respond by saying “Sure you are”.