How To Be An Agnostic
is a scientifi c hypothesis, like any other, he begins, and so the
likelihood of that hypothesis can be assessed using standard
Bayesian techniques. Unsurprisingly, he concludes God is mas-
sively unlikely. John Henry Newman, the Victorian theologian
who was recently made blessed, did something not dissimilar
over a century ago and, unsurprisingly, with opposite results
and great sophistication.
He drew a distinction between certainty and certitude, realis-
ing that we hold all sorts of things to be true in life with pretty
fl imsy evidence, given the weight of signifi cance we then associ-
ate with the presumed fact. One example is that your parents
are your parents, which is why it is so shattering to be told your
parents are not your parents – something that happens with fair
regularity.
So, he agrees: the way we form our beliefs is probabilistic,
though – and here’s Newman’s sophistication – we do so not
just by making cool mathematical calculations, but by bringing
our whole person and experience to bear upon the issue. We
use our heart as well as our head, our imagination as well as our
deliberation. To use just your head is only to give what he calls
‘notional assent’ to something. To use both, though, is to arrive
at ‘real assent’ which is a concurrence and convergence that can
be said powerfully to ring true; put all these strands together
and it is possible to form a ‘cable’ of belief: any particular strand
of itself may be fl imsy, but wound together, the cable is strong.
Belief in God is ‘an action more subtle and more comprehen-
sive than the mere appreciation of syllogistic logic’, or Bayesian
probabilities, we may add.
Reason is a crucial component in this process, because
without learning, virtues like integrity and rational discern-
ment, we might come to hold all manner of beliefs. When it
comes to questions like God, we must also accept the limita-
tions of human understanding. However, so fully equipped,
there is every reason for hoping to have certitude about matters
great and small, as indeed we do in so many parts of life.
Including, Newman believes, the question of God. ‘The pure