The Psychology of Atheism & Agnosticism
By Author Eli Kittim
Atheism is the position that there’s no God. According to Bart Ehrman, a renowned Bible scholar, atheism is a *belief system.* It has absolutely nothing to do with scientific evidence or empirical knowledge. It’s as much a belief as Theism.
Agnosticism, on the other hand, is the view that the existence of God is unknown or unknowable. According to the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who coined the term agnostic in 1869:
It simply means that a man shall not say he
knows or believes that which he has no
scientific grounds for professing to know or
believe.
In other words, whereas explicit atheism refers to “the absence of theistic belief,” agnosticism refers to an *absence* of knowledge. In the former case, an individual refuses to believe in the existence of God. In the latter, the person doesn’t know whether or not God exists. In either case, the person refuses to acknowledge or accept the existence of God, let alone God’s revelation (aka the Bible).
The common thread among atheists and agnostics is their *continual denial* of any evidence for the existence of God (e.g. the cosmological or ontological arguments). I’m particularly interested in the psychological *causes* (rather than the philosophical arguments) of militant atheism, which denote a defiant and persistent rejection of God. To present a valid argument against God’s existence is one thing. But the need to reject God’s existence at all costs is quite another. So, what is the prime motivating factor underlying this psychological repudiation?
Answer: 2 Corinthians 4.4 (NLT):
Satan, who is the god of this world, has
blinded the minds of those who don’t
believe. They are unable to see the glorious
light of the Good News. They don’t
understand this message about the glory of
Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.
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