Agnosticism Is Not Reasonable

If one cannot prove something to be true or false, then one should not make any claims about it either way. This seems eminently reasonable. It is a good rule of thumb, especially in science. After all, this is basically the definition of science according to the most influential theory of demarcation: Karl Popper’s falsificationism. However, when this way of thinking is exported beyond the borders of science, it becomes unreasonable—especially when it leads to agnosticism on the question of God. Despite its urbane sheen of measured rationality, agnosticism always entails a self-contradiction.

Bertrand Russell thought that claims about God are like claims about a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars—that there should be serious proof before such claims are accepted as true. What Russell did not appear to appreciate is that, while no one needs to make a decision about orbiting teapots, everyone must make a decision about God. The agnostic, just like everybody else, must choose what to do with his life. Every decision involves the loss of alternative possibilities. And one has to choose. If one puts off the decision, that is a choice.

“The agnostic does not avoid taking a side; he takes a side and calls it neutrality.”

If one kills oneself to avoid choosing, that is also a choice. It is true that we are “condemned to be free.” One must choose whom to forgive, what to protect, and when to tell the truth at a cost. There is no opting out because that is still a choice of what to do. This puts one in the inescapable position of figuring out what one ought to do. What will guide a person? It cannot be nothing because one has a mind and will act. The individual will decide.