Medhat ullah’s Reviews > Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction > Status Update

we all are agnostics

The onus is on defenders of the teapot ( ragon) to establish their
position. The initial assumption, which requires no defence, is
that it does not exist, and we need positive reasons to move us
away from this assumption.
Religion: To question why extraordinary claims (like the existence of a deity) are accepted without sufficient evidence

The fact that we cannot prove that there is no dragon and no
teapot does not make the likelihood of their existing equal to the
likelihood of their not existing.
Whereas we cannot positively rule out the teapot (and, we might
add, the dragon) with 100% certainty, it is reasonable to suppose
the likelihood of its existing to be very small, or at least, much less
than the probability of its existing.

The fact that we cannot prove that there is no dragon and no
teapot does not make it reasonable to suppose that they exist.
The fact that we cannot prove that there is no dragon and no
teapot does not make it unreasonable to suppose that they do not
exist.

David Hume and his Fork
'interrupted my dogmatic slumber'- a reference to Hume's
tendency to undermine claims to knowledge in certain areas of
thought. Here, then, is another significant figure in the story of
agnosticism.

The Konigsberg pr·ofessor who sought to demonstrate how, in a
wm·Id ;tlmost wholly unknown to us, our moral sense can nevertheless
lend us to God: Immanuel Kant

Rationalism, in contrast, holds that it is possible to gain knowledge purely through the exercise of the mind. Both of these approaches thinks Kant, are mistaken. Empiricism is mistaken because, although experience
may be the occasion of our acquiring knowledge, it cannot be the
sole source of knowledge because pure experience (if there could besuch a thing) would be completely uninterpretable.

that it is wrong for a man to say that
he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he
can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This
is what Agnosticism asserts: and, in my opinion, it is all that is
essential to Agnosticism.

Agnosticism is not properly described as a 'negative' creed, nor
indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses
absolute faith in the validity of a principle, which is as much ethical
and intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways,
but they all amount to this:

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Yemen of
Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with
this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye
ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you.