Then There’s This Guy.

Glyn Barrett. I know, I know, I’m only contributing to his infamy, but I just want to say… he’s wrong about agnosticism. I’m not going to doubt his story, because people have already done that and you can read their material elsewhere. I’ve also previously written about this myself, pointing out the fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning on my personal Facebook page. It’s worth restating.

Glyn Barrett of !Audacious Church in the U.K., fundamentally misunderstands atheism and agnosticism. He seems to be of the idea that these two positions, atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. This is something a whole lot of theists, particularly Christians seem to think. And so do many atheists. And agnostics. It’s a common point of view. It’s also not true. It doesn’t go atheism-agnosticism-theism. These are NOT wholly separate and distinct positions. They can and do intermingle and mix.

Many atheists are agnostic-atheists. Some are gnostic atheists. Many theists are gnostic theists. Some are agnostic theists. I’ll take a “shot in the dark” and assume that Barrett would consider himself a gnostic theist. Gnostic theists assert that their deity is real (in some sense or another, consistent with the exact deity(ies) the theist happens to believe in). Gnostic atheists are of the position that deities are not real. Atheists, who don’t use either label are by definition people who are not convinced that any deities exist. This is absolutely not the same thing as asserting that God, or gods, are not real. They are different positions to take. Obviously if you assert that God or gods aren’t real you are not convinced that they exist, but just because you are skeptical of their existence doesn’t mean you automatically believe they don’t exist. Agnosticism isn’t a “lesser” form of atheism. It doesn’t work that way. These things can coexist.

I find this whole idea really annoying and I wish people would stop spreading this claim. It’s not useful. It doesn’t help anyone. I find it annoying how people like this get famous and in order to debunk their nonsense we have to make them get even more famous. At least since GodTV took down the video, the one I’ve linked is one by Hemant Mehta who grabbed a copy of the video and doesn’t make it look like it was filmed on a potato.

If you want to learn more about Barrett and how he’s a “cool” guy check out his hip page over at the website for the Radical Conference.