Musings of a Solo-ist Astrophysicist: Neil deGrasse Tyson

[StarfarerBill]

The following is adapted from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s June 5, 2009, speech in acceptance of the American Humanist Association’s Isaac Asimov Science Award, presented to him at its annual conference in Tempe, Arizona.

When I was invited to come to the 2009 Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association, I was told I would be receiving the Isaac Asimov Science Award, and I noticed that this one award does not have the word “humanist” in it. All the other awards given out by the AHA do—the Humanist Pioneer Award, the Humanist Heroine Award, and, of course, the Humanist of the Year Award. And I’m good with that because I never really wanted to be an “-ist” (or an “-ism” for that matter).

I am a scientist—more specifically an astrophysicist, so those are the only -ists I’ll take. Because what worries me is the moment one is announced as an -ist—the moment that comes up in a conversation—the person with whom you are conversing establishes an entire philosophical worldview for you before any more words are exchanged. Now, if they are opposed to that -ism, you’re already in a hole in the conversation that you have to dig out of. The remarkable thing, of course, is that humanism is perhaps the most diverse -ism out there. For example, you have theologians who are part of this movement. That’s kind of interesting. Yet you don’t have atheists who are part of the fundamentalist religious movement. It just doesn’t work.

I prefer to enter a conversation with a fresh start. When the beginning is pure, seeds get planted; plants germinate and grow. But here is what’s interesting. Out of everything I’ve written in my life, only two essays at all address God or spirituality; everything else is just simply about the universe. But those two essays get remembered most. One of them sharply criticizes the intelligent design movement, not by saying it should be banned but by declaring that it doesn’t belong in the science classroom. This sentiment became associated with the atheist movement. Sometime later I stumbled upon my Wikipedia page, and what’s spooky is that my wiki page is more up-to-date than my personal home page. For example, two days after I appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart I thought, let me add that to my wiki page. I went there, and the link was already up. (The days of anonymity are long gone.) So I’m looking at the page and it says, “Neil deGrasse Tyson, a long-time atheist…” and I thought, where did that come from? I never said that. So I removed it and I put in “agnostic” because I think, based on all the folks who are agnostic historically, I come closer to the behavior of an agnostic than the behavior of an atheist. Three days later it was back to atheist. Then I learned that there are people who want to equate agnosticism with atheism. So I went back in, thinking I needed to be clever about this, and I changed the phrase to: “widely claimed by atheists, he is actually an agnostic.”

More:
http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/09_sept_oct/Tyson.html

[lazarus]

1. apparently

Neil doesn't understand what atheist and agnostic mean.

[StarfarerBill]

2. And what led you to this conclusion?

[lazarus]

3. the basic definitions of the words

Atheist and agnostic aren't separate things. Agnostic is a style of belief or unbelief. It literally means "without knowledge." One can be an agnostic atheist, or an agnostic Christian. Atheist simply means "without god", lacking a belief in god(s). Atheist says nothing about knowledge.

It's the difference between these two statements:

1. I believe there is no god. (gnostic atheist)
2. I don't believe there is a god. (agnostic atheist)

Calling yourself Agnostic doesn't say what you believe or don't believe, it simply says you don't know. But you still have a belief or lack of belief, because belief in god is a binary proposition. You either do or you don't.

[StarfarerBill]

4. I was asking what Dr. Tyson said that led you to believe that *he* didn't know the difference.

He basically said that he was being pegged as an atheist, when he himself was actually an agnostic; seems to me he knows the difference between the terms.

[lazarus]

5. but that's the thing

they're not two different things of the same type. The choice isn't agnostic, atheist, or theist. It's theist or atheist. Agnostic is simply a description of how you approach your atheism or theism.

[StarfarerBill]

6. Using the term agnostic says to me that he isn't sure of the existence or lack thereof of a deity.

I'm dubious of semantic hair-splitting, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt; in its common context, Dr. Tyson uses the term correctly.

[lazarus]

7. but it ignores

the binary nature of the question. Do you believe or not? Agnostic means you don't know if god(s) exists, but the belief or lack thereof is a separate matter.

[struggle4progress]

9. Of course, people are free to define themselves by whatever labels they choose. A traditional

distinction has been that "atheist" -- with "god" root "the" and negative prefix "a-" -- is someone who explicitly asserts that there is no "god," while "agnostic" -- with "know" root "gnos" and negative prefix "a-" -- is someone who claims to have no definite opinion on the subject. I suppose anyone is free to conflate these meanings in describing him- or herself or to blur them: if someone wants to say "I am an agnostic atheist" to indicate "I am disinclined to believe in any god but admit I am not certain," the person is free to do so; it runs somewhat against traditional usage but still might be communicative; similarly, if someone says "I am an agnostic but not an atheist," it communicates clearly "I have no definite opinion on the existence of any god, and in particular I do not explicitly assert non-existence." Under the traditional usage, "I am not a theist but neither am I am atheist" is a logically coherent sentence, because "theist" refers to one who explicitly asserts that there is a "god," while "atheist" refers to one who explicitly asserts that there is not, so that "atheist" and "not a theist" are not synonyms; this is entirely parallel to other meaningful sentences such as "I am not a Gnostic but neither am I an agnostic," since "agnostic" and "not a Gnostic" signify differently

[lazarus]

10. but atheist

doesn't mean one who explicitly asserts there is no god. If you're going to allow him to define himself, let atheists define ourselves. The vast majority of atheist simply assert they have no belief in a god or gods. We only get specific when confronted with specific deities which often can't logically exist.

If you don't actively and positively believe in a deity, you're by definition an atheist.

[struggle4progress]

11. I think my post was clear enough. In particular, I said clearly enough that everyone

is entitled to label self at whim. I also pointed out that the words "atheist" and "agnostic" have traditionally be used in different ways; here are some examples of usage:

... ‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God ... Though there are a couple of references in The Oxford English Dictionary to earlier occurrences of the word ‘agnostic’, it seems (perhaps independently) to have been introduced by T. H. Huxley at a party in London to found the Metaphysical Society, which flourished for over a decade and to which belonged notable thinkers and leaders of opinion. Huxley thought that as many of these people liked to describe themselves as adherents of various ‘isms’ he would invent one for himself. He took it from St. Paul's mention of the altar to the unknown God in his letter to the Ephesians. Huxley thought that we would never be able to know about the ultimate origin and causes of the universe. Thus he seems to have been more like a Kantian believer in unknowable noumena than like a Vienna Circle proponent of the view that talk of God is not even meaningful ... http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/

... Whereas an atheist denies the existence of God or gods, an agnostic asserts that God or a First Cause is one of those concepts .. that lie beyond the reach of human intelligence, and therefore can be neither confirmed nor denied ... (Webster's Concise Multimedia Encyclopedia 1995)
http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/atheism/webster.htm

... An agnostic is not someone who admits to a near infinitely small likelihood that some particular definition of god may be correct. An agnostic is someone who attributes some significant likelihood to the possibility. An atheist would bet their life against the existence of a .. god, in the same way they bet their life every time they walk out the front door in sunny San Diego that they will not be attacked by a polar bear while being struck by lightening, shot in the head, and dissemboweled by a misplaced samurai who'd been frozen in a freak boating accident and recently thawed and released by a secret group of deranged cryogenesists ... http://sifter.org/~brandyn/Atheism.html

... Since agnosticism does not forbid belief in a deity, it is compatible with most theistic positions ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism

When people use the word "agnostic" to describe themselves, they do not invariably mean the same thing. The issue cannot be what the words "really mean" -- it can only be whether one has a way of understanding what a particular person means

[struggle4progress]

8. In the second half, his answers to the questions are interesting