Agnostic?

In a previous post about the Scopes trial, I briefly mentioned the self-professed agnosticism of Clarence Darrow (pictured above). During a symposium in 1929 Darrow gave a speech that was later published as an essay titled, Why I Am an Agnostic. It is an attempted castigation of Christianity disguised as a considered appeal for his agnosticism. I will address a limited number of Darrow’s statements in that essay in a back-and-forth manner, as addressing every point is not necessary for exposing his hatred of Christ . I will identify his words by putting his name prior to the quote and putting the whole in bold italics. My responses will be in non-bold type. But first, a look at the origin of the word agnostic.

The word was coined in 1869, sixty years before Darrow’s speech/essay, by English biologist and anthropologist Thomas Huxley. Huxley was a thoroughgoing Darwinist whose zealousness for that theory earned him the nickname, “Darwin’s Bulldog.” He anglicized the Greek word agnōstos which means unknown or unknowable. He wrote, in 1884, that he coined the term to denote those who “confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with utmost confidence.” He wrote considerably more about the term he coined but suffice it for now that Huxley specifically anglicized a word meaning unknowable and specifically used the phrase hopelessly ignorant as a descriptor for the word. What does Darrow say?

Darrow: An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds or faiths.

This is how Darrow begins. It is a suspicious start. The word agnostic, according to Huxley, does not simply refer to doubt but to unknowability and to ignorance. An agnostic is one who asserts that human beings cannot have any certain knowledge of the existence or nature of a God or Gods. As we go on, we will see that Darrow was neither in doubt nor ignorant. He very emphatically made his beliefs known and his claim to be an agnostic was only a cloak for his rejection of the Gospel.

Darrow: Everyone is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept. Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds, and the Protestants are agnostic to the Catholic creed. Anyone who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge… In a popular way, in the western world, an agnostic is one who doubts or disbelieves the main tenets of the Christian faith.

This is confusion, and expectedly so, as Darrow’s hatred for Christ must necessarily result in confusion. He states that those who hold to one set of religious beliefs are agnostic toward a differing set of religious beliefs. But this is inconsistent with his original definition of an agnostic as a doubter. If a person believes “A” and rejects “B” they are not in doubt about “B,” they reject “B” as being false. Darrow must alter his original definition and introduce a new term. He adds the term, “disbelieves.” So now, an agnostic is not only one who doubts but one who disbelieves. This equivocation renders his idea of an agnostic to be meaningless. Of course everyone believes some things and disbelieves other things. This is obvious and doesn’t communicate anything meaningful. Moreover, this is not why Huxley coined the term. The term was coined to assert unknowability and ignorance, not disbelief. Although Darrow has now given himself away, as we shall see.

Darrow claims that “anyone who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge.” Beyond his equivocation, there is something more basic to his assertion about thinking. Anyone who thinks must first begin to think. How does one begin to think? How does Darrow account for this? Did he not consider himself a thinking man presenting a thoughtful case to other thinking individuals. But why? How? How can invisible ideas be communicated from one immaterial mind (the brain is material; the mind is not) to another immaterial mind. The Bible accounts for all of this. God is a God of knowledge (1 Samuel 2:3) and a God of truth (Psalm 31:5). He is the fount of reason and logic and He made mankind in His image (Genesis 1:26-27) therefore mankind has the ability to reason logically. Although sin corrupts this ability, it is healed in Christ’s redemption. And Christ is the logos (the word from which we get our English word, “logic”) who gives light to every man coming into the world (John 1:1-9).

Darrow: I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such object or thing… One cannot believe in a force excepting as a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force.

He is an agnostic as to the question of God. What does this now mean in view of his equivocation? Is he claiming to be a doubter or is he confessing to be a disbeliever?

He claims it is impossible to believe in a thing unless that thing can stamp an image on the mind. Let’s demand that Darrow meet his own standard. Agnosticism is a thing. What is the mental image that agnosticism stamps on the mind? Is there such a mental image for the concept of agnosticism as there may be for the concept of camel? Is the great trial lawyer not intelligent enough to understand the difference between abstract ideas and physical objects? Or has his rejection of Christ left him in the awkward position of asserting absurdities?

As to his statement regarding a God who is described as a force, this is not the Christian position. The Bible does not describe God as being “a force” but He is power. Certainly, God alone has immortality, dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power (1 Timothy 6:16). But this power is beyond any “force” Darrow can conceive of and dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see. So what does that mean for a mental image?

From here the essay touches on a number of topics that Darrow often repeated in his attacks on the Bible: the origin of the universe, the existence of the soul, miracles, prophecies, and several other matters. Here is just a sampling of his “agnosticism.”

• · As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess.

• If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.

• Primitive and even civilized people have grown so accustomed to believing in miracles that they often attribute the simplest manifestations of nature to agencies of which they know nothing

• As to prophecies, intelligent writers gave them up long ago.

• Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

• Let alone God creating Adam out of hand, from the dust of the earth, does anyone believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib–that the snake walked and spoke in the Garden of Eden–that he tempted Eve to persuade Adam to eat an apple, and that it is on that account that the whole human race was doomed to hell … and that finally men were saved only through God’s son dying for them, and that unless human beings believed this silly, impossible and wicked story they were doomed to hell? Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.

• Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark?

• Do Christians believe that Joshua made the sun stand still, so that the day could be lengthened, that a battle might be finished?

• What of the tale of Balaam’s ass speaking to him, probably in Hebrew? Is it true, or is it a fable?

• Above all the rest, would any human being today believe that a child was born without a father?

Does this sound like a “doubter” as Darrow first defined the agnostic? Does it sound more like a “disbeliever,” as he went on to equivocate? It is worse. It is the mind of a blasphemer on display. He expresses no doubt about the work of God in creation and redemption. He asserts that it is all “silly, impossible and wicked.” To believe it, he says, is not God-worship but “devil-worship.” This is projection. It is Darrow who delighted in devil-worship. What kind of spiritual child did Darrow admit to having been?

In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:10)

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:12-16)

Darrow rejected the Son and therefore could not be a child of God. His confession showed him to be a child of the devil. His mind was enslaved to the devil. As such a mind, Darrow goes on to confess his skepticism.

Darrow: The reasons for agnosticism and skepticism are abundant and compelling … The truth is that the origin of what we call civilization is not due to religion but to skepticism.

Truth!? Darrow has the gall to claim to be a doubter, then a disbeliever, then a skeptic, and now he will tell us about truth!? How is it that he has come into possession of truth? What mental image belongs to the concept of truth that gets stamped on the mind like an image of a camel?

Darrow: … men have studied the human body, have built hospitals and treated illness in a scientific way. Science is responsible for the building of railroads and bridges, of steamships, of telegraph lines, of cities, towns, large buildings and small, plumbing and sanitation, of the food supply, and the countless thousands of useful things that we now deem necessary to life. Without skepticism and doubt, none of these things could have been given to the world.

Science. This is the idol that Darrow would have us worship as the giver of truth. Well, let’s limit Darrow to science then. If science is the source of truth, then there must be a scientific method to demonstrate that truth comes through science. But there is none. Perhaps Darrow would have dismissed this as silly. I would agree, because the claim that science is the source of truth is a completely unscientific claim. It is a philosophical claim that stands outside the realm of science. It is the most basic claim made by the worshippers of science and yet it is a claim for which their own worldview cannot give an account. It’s a bait-and-switch. They begin with a non-scientific truth claim and then assert that only science can give us truth. In essence, it is a lie. And we know the identity of the father of lies.

The same for agnosticism. In spite of Darrow’s professed doubt and disbelief or Huxley’s unknowability and ignorance, they make plenty of assertions and truth claims about those things which they supposedly doubt, disbelieve, and do not know.

Darrow did not have the truth because Jesus is the truth (John 14:6) and Darrow rejected Christ. Here are the final three sentences of his essay, and they are an utter rejection of truth.

Darrow: The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. The modern world is the child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and faith.

Darrow was an evangelist of evil. An apostle of iniquity. In this Agnostic essay, Darrow rejected the power of God in and over His creation. He rejected the incarnation, he rejected the Gospel, and he rejected redemption. He was not a doubter. He made knowledge claims about a host of spiritual subjects. He made claims to know that the Bible, and the God of the Bible, ought to be rejected. He was not an agnostic. He was a Christ-hater.

There is a related form of Huxley’s word agnōstos in the New Testament. When Paul was in Athens and taken to Mar’s Hill, in his address, recorded in Acts 17, he said:

Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN (Agnōstō) GOD.

The truth is that the modern agnostic is a religionist. Albeit, a cowardly religionist, unlike the bold idolaters in Athens. More often than not, they are worshippers of science like Darrow and Huxley who know of Christ but strain to convince themselves and others that they can avoid Christ, the lamb of God, to whom the Father has committed all judgment (see John 5).

Paul goes on to say the following, and it applies to the pretended ignorant in America today as much as those who were ignorant in Athens millennia ago.

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance (agnoias) God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. (Acts 17:23-31)

The times of ignorance (agnoias), the time of the agnostic, are over. God commands all men everywhere to repent. To believe the Gospel of the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of Power (Mark 14:62), and who will judge the world in righteousness.

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