Abstract
Agnosticism has always had its fair amount of criticism. Religious believers often described the first agnostics as infidels and it is not uncommon to see them described as somewhat dull fence-sitters. Moreover, the undecided agnostic stance on belief in gods is often compared with being unsure about such obviously false statements as the existence of orbiting teapots, invisible dragons or even Santa Claus. In this paper, I maintain that agnosticism can properly be endorsed as a default stance. More precisely, I use a strategy presented by Alvin Plantinga and argue that it is rationally acceptable to be agnostic about the existence of God. I also anticipate and answer a number of objections. Finally, I offer my conclusion.
Highlights
There is an altogether different approach that we can take in order to show that one can rationally accept agnosticism as a default stance with respect to a specific version of theism, such as perfect being theism, while at the same time not committing to agnosticism with respect to intergalactic hippogriffs, leprechauns or the man in the moon
One way to show that agnosticism with respect to the more specific god of perfect being theism can be a regarded as a default stance is to change the approach altogether
I evaluated a number of principles in order to see whether atheism or agnosticism should be adopted as a default stance
Summary
Poverty of Agnosticism,’ committed atheist Richard Dawkins appears to be sympathetic to a statement of his childhood preacher He describes his preacher’s statement as follows: The robust muscular Christian haranguing us from the pulpit of my old school chapel admitted a sneaking regard for atheists. They at least had the courage of their misguided convictions. When evaluating if someone is rational in the latter sense the focus is on whether or not believing certain propositions would somehow be beneficial.
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