Mendalla
Happy headbanging ape!!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Religion for Breakfast, the podcast/YouTube channel of religious studies scholar Andrew Henry, posted this story yesterday. It's about a recent study from the field of psychology of religion on non-religious people and the similarities and difference between "agnostic" and "atheist". There's some interesting findings and also some that strike me as kind of "well, duh" due to being kind of obvious. The goal was to look at the emotional and psychological elements of being one of these rather than the philosophical side, though they did ask why the respondents held their particular beliefs.
They also used a classification that I am not otherwise familiar with:
open atheist - doesn't believe in God but won't rule it out
closed atheist - positive that God does not exist (so, your classic atheist)
open agnostic - God's existence is unknown/unproven but could be provable
closed agnostic - God's existence is unknown/unprovable (again, the classic philosophical agnostic)
One thing Andrew acknowledges is that they don't really look at the interaction between the two. Many people identify as things like "agnostic atheist" (though that's kind of the open atheist) and "atheist agnostic" and such. And given the strict philosophical meaning of agnostic (metaphysics are inherently unprovable and a matter of subjective belief/faith rather than demonstrable fact), one can technically be an "agnostic theist", believing in God but also that you can't actually prove that God empirically or rationally. However, the goal of the study was look at how being atheist creates different emotional and spiritual character than being agnostic so they avoided this interaction.
As always with a study like this, there's some oversimplification and generalization and the host and researchers both acknowledge this weakness. There's also a general weakness that the study is mostly looking at white North American non-religious people with a Christian background or at least from a Christian culture, which comes with a certain amount of cultural baggage (e.g. many of them are people who left or outright rejected Christianity). I suspect that looking at atheists and agnostics from the Islamic world or Jewish world might generate some different findings given the different starting point for spirituality in those cultures. Like many studies of this nature, it's a starting point rather than the be-all and end-all.
Anyhow, thought it something that people here might enjoy hearing what this study had to say. I'm not endorsing the results, not really is the host, just presenting them for your perusal. As an agnostic myself (not sure yet if I am "open" or "closed"), I have questions and issues with it but the general thrust of the findings actually makes some sense.
They also used a classification that I am not otherwise familiar with:
open atheist - doesn't believe in God but won't rule it out
closed atheist - positive that God does not exist (so, your classic atheist)
open agnostic - God's existence is unknown/unproven but could be provable
closed agnostic - God's existence is unknown/unprovable (again, the classic philosophical agnostic)
One thing Andrew acknowledges is that they don't really look at the interaction between the two. Many people identify as things like "agnostic atheist" (though that's kind of the open atheist) and "atheist agnostic" and such. And given the strict philosophical meaning of agnostic (metaphysics are inherently unprovable and a matter of subjective belief/faith rather than demonstrable fact), one can technically be an "agnostic theist", believing in God but also that you can't actually prove that God empirically or rationally. However, the goal of the study was look at how being atheist creates different emotional and spiritual character than being agnostic so they avoided this interaction.
As always with a study like this, there's some oversimplification and generalization and the host and researchers both acknowledge this weakness. There's also a general weakness that the study is mostly looking at white North American non-religious people with a Christian background or at least from a Christian culture, which comes with a certain amount of cultural baggage (e.g. many of them are people who left or outright rejected Christianity). I suspect that looking at atheists and agnostics from the Islamic world or Jewish world might generate some different findings given the different starting point for spirituality in those cultures. Like many studies of this nature, it's a starting point rather than the be-all and end-all.
Anyhow, thought it something that people here might enjoy hearing what this study had to say. I'm not endorsing the results, not really is the host, just presenting them for your perusal. As an agnostic myself (not sure yet if I am "open" or "closed"), I have questions and issues with it but the general thrust of the findings actually makes some sense.
