What Is an agnostic?

An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters
such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other
religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible
at the present time.

Are agnostics atheists?

No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know
whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can
know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not.
The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient
grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time,
an Agnostic 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. In that case, he is not
far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful
philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If
I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and
the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss
to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian
God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical
purposes, at one with the atheists.

Since you deny `God's Law', what authority
do you accept as a guide to conduct?

An Agnostic does not accept any `authority' in the sense in which
religious people do. He holds that a man should think out questions
of conduct for himself. Of course, he will seek to profit by the
wisdom of others, but he will have to select for himself the people
he is to consider wise, and he will not regard even what they
say as unquestionable. He will observe that what passes as `God's
law' varies from time to time. The Bible says both that a woman
must not marry her deceased husband's brother, and that, in certain
circumstances, she must do so. If you have the misfortune to be
a childless widow with an unmarried brother-in-law, it is logically
impossible for you to avoid disobeying `God's law'.

How do you know what is good and what is evil?
What does an agnostic consider a sin?

The Agnostic is not quite so certain as some Christians are as
to what is good and what is evil. He does not hold, as most Christians
in the past held, that people who disagree with the government
on abstruse points of theology ought to suffer a painful death.
He is against persecution, and rather chary of moral condemnation.

As for `sin', he thinks it not a useful notion. He admits, of
course, that some kinds of conduct are desirable and some undesirable,
but he holds that the punishment of undesirable kinds is only
to be commended when it is deterrent or reformatory, not when
it is inflicted because it is thought a good thing on its own
account that the wicked should suffer. It was this belief in vindictive
punishment that made men accept Hell. This is part of the harm
done by the notion of `sin'.

Does an agnostic do whatever he pleases?

In one sense, no; in another sense, everyone does whatever he
pleases. Suppose, for example, you hate someone so much that you
would like to murder him. Why do you not do so? You may reply:
"Because religion tells me that murder is a sin." But
as a statistical fact, agnostics are not more prone to murder
than other people, in fact, rather less so. They have the same
motives for abstaining from murder as other people have. Far and
away the most powerful of these motives is the fear of punishment.
In lawless conditions, such as a gold rush, all sorts of people
will commit crimes, although in ordinary circumstances they would
have been law-abiding. There is not only actual legal punishment;
there is the discomfort of dreading discovery, and the loneliness
of knowing that, to avoid being hated, you must wear a mask with
even your closest intimates. And there is also what may be called
"conscience": If you ever contemplated a murder, you
would dread the horrible memory of your victim's last moments
or lifeless corpse. All this, it is true, depends upon your living
in a law-abiding community, but there are abundant secular reasons
for creating and preserving such a community.

I said that there is another sense in which every man does as
he pleases. No one but a fool indulges every impulse, but what
holds a desire in check is always some other desire. A man's anti-social
wishes may be restrained by a wish to please God, but they may
also be restrained by a wish to please his friends, or to win
the respect of his community, or to be able to contemplate himself
without disgust. But if he has no such wishes, the mere abstract
concepts of morality will not keep him straight.

How does an agnostic regard the Bible?

An agnostic regards the Bible exactly as enlightened clerics regard
it. He does not think that it is divinely inspired; he thinks
its early history legendary, and no more exactly true than that
in Homer; he thinks its moral teaching sometimes good, but sometimes
very bad. For example: Samuel ordered Saul, in a war, to kill
not only every man, woman, and child of the enemy, but also all
the sheep and cattle. Saul, however, let the sheep and the cattle
live, and for this we are told to condemn him. I have never been
able to admire Elisha for cursing the children who laughed at
him, or to believe (what the Bible asserts) that a benevolent
Deity would send two she-bears to kill the children.

How does an agnostic regard Jesus, the Virgin
Birth, and the Holy Trinity?

Since an agnostic does not believe in God, he cannot think that
Jesus was God. Most agnostics admire the life and moral teachings
of Jesus as told in the Gospels, but not necessarily more than
those of certain other men. Some would place him on a level with
Buddha, some with Socrates and some with Abraham Lincoln. Nor
do they think that what He said is not open to question, since
they do not accept any authority as absolute.

They regard the Virgin Birth as a doctrine taken over from pagan
mythology, where such births were not uncommon. (Zoroaster was
said to have been born of a virgin; Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess,
is called the Holy Virgin.) They cannot give credence to it, or
to the doctrine of the Trinity, since neither is possible without
belief in God.

Can an agnostic be a Christian?

The word "Christian" has had various different meanings
at different times. Throughout most of the centuries since the
time of Christ, it has meant a person who believed God and immortality
and held that Christ was God. But Unitarians call themselves Christians,
although they do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and many
people nowadays use the word "God" in a much less precise
sense than that which it used to bear. Many people who say they
believe in God no longer mean a person, or a trinity of persons,
but only a vague tendency or power or purpose immanent in evolution.
Others, going still further, mean by "Christianity"
merely a system of ethics which, since they are ignorant of history,
they imagine to be characteristic of Christians only.

When, in a recent book, I said that what the world needs is "love,
Christian love, or compassion," many people thought this
showed some changes in my views, although in fact, I might have
said the same thing at any time. If you mean by a "Christian"
a man who loves his neighbor, who has wide sympathy with suffering,
and who ardently desires a world freed from the cruelties and
abominations which at present disfigure it, then, certainly, you
will be justified in calling me a Christian. And, in this sense,
I think you will find more "Christians" among agnostics
than among the orthodox. But, for my part, I cannot accept such
a definition. Apart from other objections to it, it seems rude
to Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, and other non-Christians, who,
so far as history shows, have been at least as apt as Christians
to practice the virtues which some modern Christians arrogantly
claim as distinctive of their own religion.

I think also that all who called themselves Christians in an earlier
time, and a great majority of those who do so at the present day,
would consider that belief in God and immortality is essential
to a Christian. On these grounds, I should not call myself a Christian,
and I should say that an agnostic cannot be a Christian. But,
if the word "Christianity" comes to be generally used
to mean merely a kind of morality, then it will certainly be possible
for an agnostic to be a Christian.

Does an agnostic deny that man has a soul?

This question has no precise meaning unless we are given a definition
of the word "soul." I suppose what is meant is, roughly,
something nonmaterial which persists throughout a person's life
and even, for those who believe in immortality, throughout all
future time. If this is what is meant, an agnostic is not likely
to believe that man has a soul. But I must hasten to add that
this does not mean that an agnostic must be a materialist. Many
agnostics (including myself) are quite as doubtful of the body
as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one into
difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are
only convenient symbols in discourse, not actually existing things.

Does an agnostic believe in a hereafter,
in Heaven or Hell?

The question whether people survive death is one as to which evidence
is possible. Psychical research and spiritualism are thought by
many to supply such evidence. An agnostic, as such, does not take
a view about survival unless he thinks that there is evidence
one way or the other. For my part, I do not think there is any
good reason to believe that we survive death, but I am open to
conviction if adequate evidence should appear.

Heaven and hell are a different matter. Belief in hell is bound
up with the belief that the vindictive punishment of sin is a
good thing, quite independently of any reformative or deterrent
effect that it may have. Hardly an agnostic believes this. As
for heaven, there might conceivably someday be evidence of its
existence through spiritualism, but most agnostics do not think
that there is such evidence, and therefore do not believe in heaven.

Are you never afraid of God's judgment
in denying Him?

Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and
Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large
portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers
no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God,
I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity
as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

How do agnostics explain the beauty and harmony
of nature?

I do not understand where this "beauty" and "harmony"
are supposed to be found. Throughout the animal kingdom, animals
ruthlessly prey upon each other. Most of them are either cruelly
killed by other animals or slowly die of hunger. For my part,
I am unable to see any great beauty or harmony in the tapeworm.
Let it not be said that this creature is sent as a punishment
for our sins, for it is more prevalent among animals than among
humans. I suppose the questioner is thinking of such things as
the beauty of the starry heavens. But one should remember that
stars every now and again explode and reduce everything in their
neighborhood to a vague mist. Beauty, in any case, is subjective
and exists only in the eye of the beholder.

How do agnostics explain miracles and other
revelations of God's omnipotence?

Agnostics do not think that there is any evidence of "miracles"
in the sense of happenings contrary to natural law. We know that
faith healing occurs and is in no sense miraculous. At Lourdes,
certain diseases can be cured and others cannot. Those that can
be cured at Lourdes can probably be cured by any doctor in whom
the patient has faith. As for the records of other miracles,
such as Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, the agnostic
dismisses them as legends and points to the fact that all religions
are plentifully supplied with such legends. There is just as
much miraculous evidence for the Greek gods in Homer as for the
Christian God in the Bible.

There have been base and cruel passions,
which religion opposes. If you abandon religious principles, could
mankind exist?

The existence of base and cruel passions is undeniable, but I
find no evidence in history that religion has opposed these passions.
On the contrary, it has sanctified them, and enabled people to
indulge them without remorse. Cruel persecutions have been commoner
in Christendom than anywhere else. What appears to justify persecution
is dogmatic belief. Kindliness and tolerance only prevail in
proportion as dogmatic belief decays. In our day, a new dogmatic
religion, namely, communism, has arisen. To this, as to other
systems of dogma, the agnostic is opposed. The persecuting character
of present day communism is exactly like the persecuting character
of Christianity in earlier centuries. In so far as Christianity
has become less persecuting, this is mainly due to the work of
freethinkers who have made dogmatists rather less dogmatic. If
they were as dogmatic now as in former times, they would still
think it right to burn heretics at the stake. The spirit of tolerance
which some modern Christians regard as essentially Christian is,
in fact, a product of the temper which allows doubt and is suspicious
of absolute certainties. I think that anybody who surveys past
history in an impartial manner will be driven to the conclusion
that religion has caused more suffering than it has prevented.

What is the meaning of life to the agnostic?

I feel inclined to answer by another question: What is the meaning
of `the meaning of life'? I suppose what is intended is some general
purpose. I do not think that life in general has any purpose.
It just happened. But individual human beings have purposes, and
there is nothing in agnosticism to cause them to abandon these
purposes. They cannot, of course, be certain of achieving the
results at which they aim; but you would think ill of a soldier
who refused to fight unless victory was certain. The person who
needs religion to bolster up his own purposes is a timorous person,
and I cannot think as well of him as of the man who takes his
chances, while admitting that defeat is not impossible.

Does not the denial of religion mean the
denial of marriage and chastity?

Here again, one must reply by another question: Does the man who
asks this question believe that marriage and chastity contribute
to earthly happiness here below, or does he think that, while
they cause misery here below, they are to be advocated as means
of getting to heaven? The man who takes the latter view will
no doubt expect agnosticism to lead to a decay of what he calls
virtue, but he will have to admit that what he calls virtue is
not what ministers to the happiness of the human race while on
earth. If, on the other hand, he takes the former view, namely,
that there are terrestrial arguments in favor of marriage and
chastity, he must also hold that these arguments are such as should
appeal to the agnostic. Agnostics, as such, have no distinctive
views about sexual morality. But most of them would admit that
there are valid arguments against the unbridled indulgence of
sexual desires. They would derive these arguments, however, from
terrestrial sources and not from supposed divine commands.

Is not faith in reason alone a dangerous creed?
Is not reason imperfect and inadequate without spiritual and moral
law?

No sensible man, however agnostic, has "faith in reason alone."
Reason is concerned with matters of fact, some observed, some
inferred. The question whether there is a future life and the
question whether there is a God concern matters of fact, and the
agnostic will hold that they should be investigated in the same
way as the question, "Will there be an eclipse of the moon
tomorrow?" But matters of fact alone are not sufficient
to determine action, since they do not tell us what ends we ought
to pursue. In the realm of ends, we need something other than
reason. The agnostic will find his ends in his own heart and
not in an external command. Let us take an illustration: Suppose
you wish to travel by train from New York to Chicago; you will
use reason to discover when the trains run, and a person who though
that there was some faculty of insight or intuition enabling him
to dispense with the timetable would be thought rather silly.
But no timetable will tell him that it is wise, he will have
to take account of further matters of fact; but behind all the
matters of fact, there will be the ends that he thinks fitting
to pursue, and these, for an agnostic as for other men, belong
to a realm which is not that of reason, though it should be in
no degree contrary to it. The realm I mean is that of emotion
and feeling and desire.

Do you regard all religions as forms of superstition
or dogma? Which of the existing religions do you most respect,
and why?

All the great organized religions that have dominated large populations
have involved a greater or less amount of dogma, but "religion"
is a word of which the meaning is not very definite. Confucianism,
for instance, might be called a religion, although it involves
no dogma. And in some forms of liberal Christianity, the element
of dogma is reduced to a minimum.

Of the great religions of history, I prefer Buddhism, especially
in its earliest forms, because it has had the smallest element
of persecution.

Communism like agnosticism opposes religion,
are agnostics Communists?

Communism does not oppose religion. It merely opposes the Christian
religion, just as Mohammedanism does. Communism, at least in the
form advocated by the Soviet Government and the Communist Party,
is a new system of dogma of a peculiarly virulent and persecuting
sort. Every genuine Agnostic must therefore be opposed to it.

Do agnostics think that science and religion
are impossible to reconcile?

The answer turns upon what is meant by `religion'. If it means
merely a system of ethics, it can be reconciled with science.
If it means a system of dogma, regarded as unquestionably true,
it is incompatible with the scientific spirit, which refuses to
accept matters of fact without evidence, and also holds that complete
certainty is hardly ever impossible.

What kind of evidence could convince you
that God exists?

I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that
was going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including
events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these
events then produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at
least of the existence of some superhuman intelligence. I can
imagine other evidence of the same sort which might convince me,
but so far as I know, no such evidence exists.

This article was mirrored by us after it was taken off the web. The original author is Bertrand Russell.