Thomas Huxley’s Scientism and the Agnostic’s False Modesty

Exploring dubious and plausible forms of agnosticism

If you’re interested in religion and in debates about God’s existence, chances are you’ve come across the allegation that atheism reduces to agnosticism or that atheists have no epistemic right to go beyond the stalemate of saying that God’s existential status is unknown.

Agnosticism is roughly the view that there’s no knowledge to be had about God, so all we can do is suspend our judgment on the matter. Yet atheists believe that God is unreal, and they insist that we can have this negative knowledge.

What exactly, then, is agnosticism and how does it relate to atheism?

Huxley’s Scientistic Agnosticism

Luckily, the confusions here can be traced to one man, namely to the man who coined the word “agnosticism,” and that was Thomas Huxley. Huxley was a science popularizer who was so ferocious in his advocacy for Darwinism that he became known as “Darwin’s bulldog.” He defended the theory of natural selection against Creationism, but he went further into social Darwinism or into something like what today would be called evolutionary psychology.

He used evolutionary biology to refute socialism and to motivate economic competitions between companies in a free, unregulated market. Eventually, he retracted some of that reductionism, when he maintained that our moral duty, rather, is to resist some of our natural instincts. Still, Huxley’s impulse here to overextend the reach of science into politics and economics is relevant because that’s just what he did with his principle of agnosticism.

Huxley writes, “Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology.”

By “anti-theology,” Huxley means what we would call the philosophy of atheism. The agnostic rejects both theology and atheism, based on the scientific or skeptical principle that we shouldn’t pretend to know what we don’t know. We should be open to new evidence and arguments, but if there are no scientific grounds for the belief, we shouldn’t profess an opinion on the matter one way or the other. We should withhold judgment.

The key point in this statement of agnosticism is the emphasis on “scientific grounds.” The reason there can’t be sufficient grounds for either affirming or rejecting the statement that God exists is that that statement isn’t scientifically well-formed. This isn’t a testable hypothesis, so the agnostic, acting in the spirit of science, dismisses the question as empty or as currently unknown.

This becomes clearer in another of Huxley’s statements on agnosticism in which he says,

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, “Try all things, hold fast by that which is good.” It is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

Here, Huxley means perhaps to lend agnosticism some prestige by associating it with reason more generally and even with the rationale for the Reformation. But taken as a whole, Huxley’s concept of agnosticism is a tissue of confusions.

Take the former quotation about agnosticism being essential to science. Is Huxley stating only the tautology that scientific conclusions must be scientifically supported? In that case, the question would be whether theism is a scientific question. Why couldn’t theism be, rather, theological or philosophical? You see, if agnosticism isn’t just a tautology about how science works, Huxley must be overextending science just as he did when he promoted social Darwinism. In this case, he’d be attempting to drive out of contention not socialism but theology and philosophy.

Only if the latter two disciplines were empty as alternative ways of thinking would the agnostic be justified in suspending judgment about God’s existence due to the lack of “scientific grounds.” Once scientists would be done with the matter, there would be no one left to pick up the ball, as it were.

In short, Huxley presupposes scientism, the prejudice against philosophy and against all other nonscientific disciplines, a prejudice you still find in some hotheaded scientific camps.

Or take the second quotation above, especially the last, most telling point about the negative formulation. Notice that Huxley clears the way for agnosticism by assuming that certainty is the standard. He says we shouldn’t pretend to be “certain” about matters that aren’t demonstrated. But that’s consistent with atheism as a judgment of God’s improbability. You don’t have to be certain to be negative.

And take that more general principle which is supposed to be equivalent to agnosticism: “Try all things, hold fast by that which is good.” Suppose you try out a new screwdriver, but you find it’s too finicky and big for your hand. Should you remain neutral about that tool’s quality or should you judge negatively that it doesn’t work for you? Neutrality there would overlook your negative experience and thus be untrue to the data.

Likewise, suppose you try out religion and theology and find them wanting. Couldn’t you therefore dismiss theism based on that trial and error, as incomplete as that assessment might be? Why pretend to be indifferent about something that rubs you the wrong way?

The Scorched Earth Tactics of Later Agnostics

These scientistic confusions about agnosticism misled the positivists and later generations of science popularizers, including Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Jordan Peterson. Scientists and science popularizers often dismiss the autonomy or the worth of philosophy. They do so not rigorously or systematically but more by way of venting a lazy prejudice, a snide contempt that comes and goes depending on their mood.

These propagandists often presume that if science leaves the matter as inconclusive, there’s nothing further to be done (such as having a philosophical conversation about it), so the rational course is to suspend judgment, to declare the possibility unknowable. Science isn’t just our best shot of finding an answer, but the only respectable, workable one.

“Unknowable” for these agnostics or skeptics is synonymous with “unscientific.” Only if you believed that philosophy especially is incapable of establishing whether a farfetched belief is rationally justified would you feel entitled to say that because theism isn’t scientifically testable, the question of theism is perfectly up in the air, with no positive or negative guidance forthcoming from elsewhere.

The irony is that affirming this scientism and this discredited positivism amounts to a performative self-contradiction. The message is anti-theological and anti-philosophical, but the agnostic’s medium or method isn’t at all scientific. The agnostic overextends science, based on religious faith in science or on philosophical speculations, depriving the agnostic of any grounds for dismissing theology and philosophy in general.

Science itself doesn’t tell the agnostic to say that any belief which isn’t scientifically supported is empty, undetermined, or a matter of indifference. That’s the prejudice of scientism at work, the secular Enlightenment faith that science is progressive and that dogmas threaten to take us back to the dark ages.

In short, these scientistic agnostics are hypocrites. They say or imply that philosophy is as vacuous or as obscure as theology, but in championing science they declare everything outside to be a no man’s land, which declaration is itself a bit of philosophy, and a shoddy bit at that.

What agnostics are saying essentially is that religious questions are unknowable because they’re unscientific. The positivists made that explicit by declaring that unscientific or unverifiable statements are meaningless. They discounted philosophy as an independent or more broadly rational means of determining what’s meaningful or justified. That move of theirs is itself philosophical, which blows up their scientism, positivism, and agnosticism.

Assessing Probabilities

The scientistic confusions at the root of Huxley’s original formulation of agnosticism are enough to warrant skepticism about the entire concept. Technically, we have sufficient reason to discount the relevance of agnosticism to philosophically motivated atheism. But for the sake of argument, let’s try to show the conditions under which agnosticism might be sensible.

There are questions that are meaningful but practically unanswerable. For example, exactly how many grains of sand are there today on Earth? You could count them all, but assuming no one will do so, the exact number is unknown. If someone said there are precisely one trillion and three grains, you might have reason to be agnostic. You have no idea whether that’s the right number since the number would just be a guess, but the guess could be correct.

Even here, though, the odds aren’t fifty-fifty. The chances that anyone could guess the exact number of grains without counting them all are surely very low. Therefore, you wouldn’t be entirely openminded after all; instead, you’d err on the side of doubting that there are currently a trillion and three grains. You don’t know for sure, one way or the other, but you’d judge that guess to be probably false.

Would that doubt be contrary to reason, in violation of Huxley’s statement that you should “follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration”? What Huxley must mean by “reason” is “science,” but there’s no need to equate the two since reason long predated scientific methods. As evolutionary science shows, reason likely began with just such practical problems in view: we had to make snap decisions without having the luxury of proof or of certainty. We had to assess probabilities and not be so detached, neutral, or absentminded that we could be easily exploited or victimized by natural or social threats.

Therefore, according to a scientific understanding of reason, the agnostic should have no objection to judging God’s existence to be improbable, assuming the question of theism were as wild a guess as saying that we’re currently standing on exactly a trillion and three grains of sand.

Mysticism and Direct Knowledge of God

But is theism a wild guess? And how could we weigh the possibilities in the cosmological context? In the case of sand, we know there are a lot of grains, so the odds of guessing the right number is one in a lot. But as to the ultimate source of the universe, we’re much more in the dark. True, science has advanced our knowledge tremendously, compared to what it used to be before the invention of telescopes, for example.

Yet if we’re talking about God as a supernatural source of all of nature, we’re talking about something that’s inherently beyond our capacity to understand. To posit God is to posit something beyond our cognitive limits. How, then, can we gauge the odds of such an entity? To know the odds is already to understand the territory and to naturalize what’s supposed to be supernatural.

In short, monotheists and mystics, at least, might think paradoxically of God as that which is unthinkable (or “noumenal” in Immanuel Kant’s sense), as an aspect of reality that escapes all our attempts to assimilate it to our way of thinking. The agnostic might suggest, then, that throwing our hands in the air in exasperation is precisely the right attitude to have towards the possibility of this “God.”

The point wouldn’t be that theism is unscientific, although that would of course be entailed. Instead, the crux would be that theists themselves take knowability off the table by defining “God” as the perfect Other. If God is beyond our understanding, he’s beyond our rational ability to assess, in which case we should have no basis for saying one way or the other whether God’s real. In short, doesn’t agnosticism follow from mysticism or from the upshot of theistic grandiosity?

Mystics, though, will say that God is knowable through direct contact, albeit not so much through rational argument. We encounter something divine when we purify our mind and learn to perceive how the presence of Being precedes all beings. In that case, agnosticism about mystical theism would amount to self-doubt or to some character flaw. God would be available as a transformative experience, but you’d have to earn that experience with spiritual discipline rather than with scientific acumen.

Or perhaps mysticism is a fraud and there’s no such theophany. Maybe what mystics experience has spiritual and psychological importance, but they’re nevertheless mistaken about the nature of that experience. Maybe the divinity in question is little more than a detached, peaceful attitude that lies just past jadedness, or is a joy felt by regaining a childlike sense of innocence and wonder that nevertheless has nothing to do with the First Cause.

The Semantic Emptiness of Theistic Language

Putting aside mysticism, what about, say, the classical theist’s talk of God as a simple, immaterial, eternal substance? Agnosticism might enter here as doubt about the meaningfulness of such metaphysical pronouncements. This is the kernel of truth in positivism, which is that it’s indeed possible for smug intellectuals to be talking nonsense. We can use big words to pretend to be smarter than we are. As Wittgenstein said, language games can bewitch philosophers.

But let’s take a simple analogy. Suppose I told you there’s a Snagglefraggle on top of your head. You have no idea what I mean by “Snagglefraggle,” but I decline to elaborate while insisting that there’s a Snagglefraggle on your head.

The question is whether you ought to be agnostic about what would appear to be such a vacuous possibility. The answer is no, you should not be openminded about that which is truly meaningless. If a statement makes no sense, if it’s self-contradictory or so farfetched and contrary to commonsense as to be insane, you would be in dereliction of your rational obligations to pretend to be open-minded about whether that statement is true.

Of course, if the statement were framed in a language you don’t speak, you’d be wise to be openminded since the statement would be meaningless only for you, in which case it could still be true. In that case, translation between the two languages would have to be possible. If there could be no such translation, you’d have no reason to think the statement is indeed meaningful since you’d have no basis for distinguishing that alleged foreign language from nonsense.

And if the statement is gibberish, it’s neither true nor false, not because its epistemic status is unknown, but because it’s not a proposition at all. You’d be as open-minded about the talk of a Snagglefraggle as you would about the claim that a rock plus a spider and a drop of water is true. That latter combination of things isn’t ordinarily made up of signs that add up to a truth value, so this would be a confusion of categories. Rocks, spiders, and water drops might be used as symbols, but in so far as they’re just things out there in the world, they’re not about anything else.

(Technically, things in nature have natural meanings in that they’re effects that indicate the state of their causes. Likewise, you might use the talk of a Snagglefraggle as an indicator of the speaker’s state of mind, but these natural indicators aren’t the same as semantic meanings that are true or false.)

True, if a meaningless statement is neither true nor false, and the classical theist’s “God” is as meaningless as “Snagglefraggle,” we’d have no reason to be atheists in the sense that we’d have no basis for calling theistic statements false. They’d be nonsensical, not falsified. But we’d still be atheistic in that we wouldn’t be neutral towards theism. On the contrary, we’d eliminate all trace of theism from our mind, just as you’d be quick to forget any utterance that strikes you as invidious babble.

This isn’t the same as the scientist’s commitment to follow the evidence only as far as it leads. There could be no evidence for or against theism if “God” were meaningless. But that wouldn’t license open-mindedness or neutrality towards theism; instead, we’d have to dismiss theism as not even interesting enough to be worthy of refutation. We take a negative stance towards nonsense if only because we prefer not to waste our time.

Faith and Theistic Agnosticism

One last thought is that there’s another kind of theism that seems to entail agnosticism. Think of Soren Kierkegaard’s point that genuine faith should be exercised with fear and trembling. The evidence for God is supposed to be mixed, which is why God gave us freewill. He wants us to choose to be followers or to go our separate way. If the evidence were overwhelming for or against God, there could be no faith-based choice to believe despite that insufficiency.

In short, in so far as religion is based on faith, the beliefs and practices aren’t supposed to be perfectly rational. You’re supposed to be left with doubts, like the biblical Abraham when an angel told him to sacrifice his son for God. Kierkegaard reasons that Abraham wouldn’t have known whether he should obey. He’d have been torn because the angel would have appeared real, but the angel’s message would have seemed wrong.

Pascal’s wager, too, assumes that the evidence for theism is evenly mixed, so we must gamble on which scenario presents us the best payoff.

Does this Protestant emphasis on faith amount to agnosticism? We wouldn’t know whether God exists or not, but we’d choose to believe he does despite that ignorance. Huxley says we should follow reason rather than anything else, whether that be our religious upbringing that predisposes us to credit religions or the social pressure to subscribe to a religion to fit into the local culture.

But the point is that there’s a type of agnosticism or at least of neutrality or uncertainty that obtains when our mental faculties conflict with each other. Reason might be opposed to our emotions or to our upbringing and our experience, which leaves us in the position of Buridan’s donkey that’s equally hungry and thirsty and is caught midway between a bale of hay and a bucket of water, causing the donkey to starve from indecision.

Kierkegaard said that when faced with such excruciating uncertainty, we can free ourselves only by taking a leap of faith, which we should do because of the existential stakes. By contrast, the agnostic says we shouldn’t try to resolve a situation that’s irresolvable. Instead, we should just move on and think about something else.

This raises the question of whether we can move on from God, even after what Nietzsche called God’s “death.” Do atheists and agnostics alike move on from God or do they switch to worshipping idols? If the idea of God is of the ultimate end of human endeavour, the sacred ideal that motivates us to go on living despite all the hardships, agnosticism in the sense of indifference or open-mindedness would seem counterproductive. For an ideal, an idol, or a religious tradition to inspire us, we’d have to feel convinced of its worthiness.

Thus, this existential aspect of religion assumes agnosticism as its starting point, but religious folks are supposed to overcome their doubts with a nonrational act, a cutting of the Gordian knot with a sword.