The "Mr" in question is one Aron Ra, a very well respected and beloved atheist who deals fabulously with phylogeny and the processes of evolution. And the title comes from a recent Twitter exchange in which he was debated on two fronts by a few Agnostics (including myself) who found flaws in his reasoning and ended up getting blocked for their trouble.
Firstly Aron decided that Agnosticism was an invalid position taken by atheists who just did not want to be labelled "atheist". I'll ignore the fact that despite being an Agnostic I label myself as an atheist all the time; firstly to increase the visibility of the term "atheist" and secondly because I'm bored with people asking me what an Agnostic, or Humanist is (I'm both).
Agnosticism is the belief (it is not a claim) that we will never be able to truly understand, or define, the supernatural; particularly when it comes to the concept of gods. The word "Agnostic" does not have its root in the Greek word "gnosos" from whence came the word "Gnostic". Its root is the noun "Gnostic". Neither is it the claim that we don't know that no gods exist or any other guff.
The actual OED definition is this:
"Agnostic noun and adjective M19
(ORIGIN from A-10 + GNOSTIC)
>A noun. A person who holds the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomena. Also, a person who is uncertain or non-committal about a particular thing."
Nowhere in this definition does it say that Agnosticism is making any claim of knowledge whatsoever, in either direction. It is a position of complete neutrality. Which is why the term "agnostic atheist" is both implicitly and explicitly a misnomer.
One cannot be both an Agnostic and an Atheist. (repeat over and over until you learn it)
Aron's take on "neutrality" is that when a question is posed the natural position is to disbelieve it until such evidence is presented that a change in position is made. He thinks this is very scientific. It clearly isn't the way we approach things in science though, is it? In science, we come up with an idea... such as: "There is a thing called a boson. We then try to figure out what parameters it has, and then we find a way to test for a thing with those set of parameters. When we found it, we called it a Higgs Boson and much rejoicing was had." What did not happen was this: "Higgs proposed the boson. Other scientists en masse said it was bollocks unless he could prove otherwise. He couldn't, so it went undiscovered."
Neutrality, by definition, is non-committal. We call neutrality by another name in a debate: "impartial". That means one does not take a stance on a thing being debated until perhaps the weight of evidence is so great on one side that remaining impartial becomes dogmatic.
We are Agnostic because we have no idea what the supernatural world really is, or if there is one, or if a god, or gods, exist. We have no way, as yet to even test for such things. We are not sitting on a fence between the world of theism and atheism, as so many atheists would like to put us. We are sitting on a wall, eating peanuts and drinking soda, watching theists and atheists duke it out, wondering what all the fuss is about.
Aron's dance didn't stop there.
In a second part of the debate, Aron was answering a general call (possibly by me) to define what a god is. He defined it thus:
Quote: "A magical anthropomorphic immortal."
It will be obvious to anyone who has read my earlier post "What is a God?" that there are immediate problems with this definition. You will have to define "magical", define "immortal"... and in Aron's case define what you mean by "anthropomorphic" too!
When it was pointed out that "magical" beings exist that aren't gods, he first seemed to concede that Archangels fit the bill, but then decided that Neil Gaiman (the fiction author) had written a book called American Gods (a fictional story) that explained that anything magical was actually a god, so that's that! Case closed. Then went on to criticise his own view as not fitting in with the thousands of beings worshipped by millions of people after relabelling this as my view, to begin with. Look... this is going to get very complicated so I think I'd better start with my objections to his definition.
I pointed out that there are two ways to disagree with his definition. One is to find "beings" that fit the definition but aren't gods, and the other is to find "beings" that are gods but don't fit the definition.
So, cue Ogo the jackal god (not anthropomorphic) to which he argued that worshippers had anthropomorphized Ogo and therefore his definition held... despite the fact that anthropomorphic and anthropomorphized aren't the same thing. Anthropomorphic refers to having anthropomorphism, which in one sense does mean having the personality or traits of a human, but is most commonly regarded as being in the form of a human (more on this in a bit). To anthropomorphize something is to attribute anthropomorphism to a thing, usually through embodying a non-human thing with human-like traits.
The problem with this word is its ambiguity. I would refine it to "anthropomorphized" in that the definition is a "magical anthropomorphized immortal" just for the sake of clarity. However, if you anthropomorphized a god who you regard as being super-human, you would only be telling half the story. "Yahweh" does not have human emotions according to many believers. He is neither good nor bad, although he was able to create both states of being through the processes of Creation and Fall (even though the Gen 2 narrative explicitly points out that they are pre-existent). So, in a sense, you super-anthropomorphize a god. You give it traits that mere humans can only aspire to... such as perfect judgement and perfect will.
The definition then becomes "a magical super-anthropomorphized immortal".
Then we come to "immortal". I pointed out that Cain was an immortal being, cursed to roam the Earth forever unable to die (in some Midrash) and unable to be killed. And I pointed to the Indian hero god Balin who was killed by his brother in the celestial realm and is therefore only regarded in the past tense as part of the mythology of the region... many other gods fall into this category. In fact, any god who has not got a current group of worshippers fall into this category according to another (better) fiction author, Terry Pratchett. In either case, the definition fails because in one instance the being is immortal, but not a god (Archangels fit this too, as do Orishas, the African sprites who inhabit rocks, wind etc.) and in the other the being is a god, but not immortal.
At this point, Aron did another little dance. His argument was that since Cain was only enchanted, not divine, that he wasn't magical... then proceeded to reply to another tweeter asking the question "since when did enchant not mean magical" by giving the definition of enchanted as being magical and then claiming we were the ones claiming that enchanted did not mean magical all along and he was right again so there! Phew! What a nifty little jig that was!
Of course, it didn't work because we held his feet to the fire, which is why we both got blocked in the end.
If a being is immortal, one could argue that this fits the definition, straightaway, of being "magical", but Aron's argument was that Cain might have been magical by virtue of being enchanted, but he wasn't "divine" and therefore not magical in and of himself.
So, you mean "divine" when you said "magical" then Aron?
Are we to further refine the description you gave? Are we up to "a divine super-anthropomorphized immortal" at this point? What do you mean when you say "divine"? That isn't just being "god-like" is it? Saints are divine. Archangels are divine. Both, by definition, are immortals. Are we back to Gaiman's "he's a god, she's a god, everyone's a god god!"?
But even if we take Aron's point here there is a further example of a god being mortal if not for an enchantment. All the Norse Gods fall into this category. Idun kept an orchard of magical apples which kept the Norse gods alive and when Loki hid them they began to die. They were not immortal in and of themselves, if it weren't for the apples they wouldn't have been!
This question of what "magical", "enchanted" and "divine" meant finished Aron off. He accused us of trolling him and blocked us. You can see the conversation for yourself if you use Twitter to search for "@ublasphemist @Aron_Ra @OceanKeltoi". Feel free to point out where I've misrepresented his position on any of this. Please. Because if I missed something I'd like to know. I respect Aron for his biology work and work on debunking the Deluge, but he came across here as being every bit as dogmatic and doxastically closed as any Young Earth Creationist I've ever dealt with.
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