I’m no Aquinas scholar, but …
… even I can see that this Slate author hasn’t done his “grade-school” homework on Thomas Aquinas.
And so atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to prove by logic the possibility of creation “ex nihilo” (from nothing). His eventual explanation entailed a Supreme Being standing outside of time and space somehow endowing it with existence (and interfering once in a while) without explaining what caused this source of “uncaused causation” to be created in the first place.
This is—or should be—grade-school stuff, but many of the New Atheists seemed to have stopped thinking since their early grade-school science-fair triumphs.
[From The rise of the new agnostics. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine]
Need I spell out the problems here? Or are they too grade-school obvious?
The most difficult thing about it all is figuring out how he could get anyone to publish it.
More interesting yet is the way Rosenbaum closes out the piece. It’s quite consistent with the theme of the whole:
Wilkins’ suggestion is that there are really two claims agnosticism is concerned with is important: Whether God exists or not is one. Whether we can know the answer is another. Agnosticism is not for the simple-minded and is not as congenial as atheism and theism are.
The courage to admit we don’t know and may never know what we don’t know is more difficult than saying, sure, we know.
As Errol Morris put it in the conclusion of one his epic multipart New York Times examination of anosognosia—not knowing what we don’t know:
We have “the desire but not the wherewithal to make sense of experience. One might easily forsee that this would lead to unending unmitigated frustration and suffering. But here’s where self-deception [and] anosognosia … step in. We wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything, but we would never be aware of that fact.”
Like I said, it’s complicated. But the world has suffered enough from oversimplifications. The agnostic moment has come.
Theism and atheism are both for the simple-minded, he thinks. I won’t defend or even comment on atheism in that respect. But I’ll note that Rosenbaum has provided further evidence he’s never read Aquinas. Or Calvin, or Augustine, or maybe even Lewis. Nor does it seem likely he has spent much time in any decent theological library.
And theism is for the weak-willed, too, he says. That would come as quite a surprise to a lot of Christians.
It’s pretty interesting to see someone tout agnostic thought as superior to its alternatives when it is a self-referential incoherence. It takes just as much belief to be an agnostic as to be a theist or athiest. The difference is what you believe in. In agnosticism it’s the belief of non-belief. Agnostics are essentailly saying they believe in the inability to believe. How that counts as rational thought is beyond me.
“The courage to admit we don’t know and may never know what we don’t know is more difficult than saying, sure, we know.”
Proclaiming the virtue of ignorance. Romans 1:20
I had a better reaction to this article. Yes, they have a butchered understanding of Aquinas, and probably theism in general. But give me someone who is skeptical of his own ability to know the answers to these questions than most of the atheist alternatives (Such as, “We can tell there is no God, because He’d have made eyes better.” or along those lines.)
That the article reads largely as a reaction to and impatience with the New Atheism is probably why it sits well with me. But, Rosenbaum’s attitude seems positive to me. Like you could actually have a conversation with him, rather than yet another argument/fight.
Frankly, who would you rather converse with – him, or the typical NA? My answer would be Rosenbaum.
Perhaps the answer to the agnostic is, “you may doubt the ability to know if God exists, but, do you think God, if He exists, would be able to make His existence known, and/or assist you in coming to a reliable conclusion concerning his existence? If so, have you sought His assistance (e.g., “prayed”)?”
Agnosticism is (or can be) as much a willful refuge from God as is atheism; it’s just more subtle.