Bob Murphy had Stefan Molyneux as a guest on Bob’s podcast, The Bob Murphy Show. Any libertarian would enjoy the conversation, but I wanted to add two cents on their discussion of religion.

*Everyone* is agnostic. At least in common parlance, where people claim to be agnostic if they don’t know if gods exist or if they’re open to the belief in gods, literally everyone is agnostic. No one knows if gods exist.

Everyone is either a theist or an atheist. There is no middle ground. One either believes in gods or they don’t. Believe is a verb. You’re either believing or you aren’t. There’s no gray area where you might be jumping, or you’re open to jumping and, therefore neither jumping nor not jumping. You’re either jumping or you aren’t. If you believe in gods, you’re a theist, if you don’t actually, actively believe in gods, you’re an atheist. I think the confusion comes from the popular lack of distinction between the lack of belief in the existence of gods and the belief in the non-existence of gods. Both are atheism, but the lack of belief in existence is passive and belief in non-existence is active. In the former, you aren’t convinced that gods exist and in the latter you are convinced that they don’t exist.

In Episode 424 of the Bob Murphy Show, near the end of the episode Bob and Stefan Molyneux talk about Molyneux’s evolving ideas about Christianity. At one point (1:02.40 mins), Molyneux refers to agnostics as “taking pride in not making a decision on essential matters in the world is a kind of smug superiority on a lack of intellectual throughput and rigor and consistency…”. Belief in gods is not a decision. You’re either convinced, for whatever reasons, or you aren’t. This is a problem with Pascal’s Wager. You can’t just start believing in something. If you can, then start believing in Flarf, The Almighty, the semi-sentient, inter-dimensional turtle who created the universe that I just made up. No, I mean, really believe in him. Then, in a few minutes, stop believing in him. You won’t be able to do it. That’s not how belief works. Telling yourself you believe in something and actually believing in it are different things. The best you can do is search for evidence or a story that convinces you.

I just had to address these little issues because I think they’re important to understand when pushing this type of discussion forward.