A default method, belief or assumption is what makes sense to start off with unless you get evidence to the contrary.
Agnosticism is promoted as a good default. It looks open-minded.
We will consider it as a default method, default belief and default assumption.
It can be a default method without being a default belief or default assumption.
But it cannot be a default belief or default assumption without being a default method.
Methodological agnosticism?
Should agnosticism be a default as in how we approach religious or atheist claims? Many say that agnostic as in method, matters more than agnosticism as an assumption or position or non-position etc.
Methodological agnosticism means you live and investigate as an agnostic no matter what you think or believe about God or atheism.
It is trying to safeguard against bias and to be open to changing your mind should new evidence arise that challenges your beliefs or ideas.
Suppose there really is no way to test what is behind magical claims and divine revelations - God, occult ability etc. Methodological agnosticism may claim to be neutral. Whoever is not for the claims is not supporting them. To just assume there probably is a supernatural when you cannot test for what it is or when it happens or what it does is not open-mindedness.
By the way, there is no way to ascertain that if the supernatural is doing something, exactly what is probably doing it.
When you talk about open-mindedness, you mean you are going to keep testing and will change your mind according to the best information available.
Methodological agnosticism is the default method.
Is agnosticism the recommended default belief?
It looks like it is the most open-minded belief. It does not matter what it looks like. The real open-minded position is the one that has the best evidence.
Believers in God say agnostics and atheists risk offending a good God - and robbing themselves and others of a good relationship with him. But the risk of hurting somebody is not a reason to say they exist.
Agnostics say they do not believe or disbelieve that there is a God. They say the evidence they have so far is indecisive.
They are accused of being fence sitters. Some are but true agnostics keep a careful eye on what the evidence says about the God question.
A dogmatic person will say they know there is a God, they know there is no God or they know that nobody knows either way. Agnostics, atheists and believers do not seek 100% certainty. That would be a mistake. They want support beyond reasonable doubt.
Believers in God often assert that you would need to know all things before you can say nobody knows if there is a God or not. They accuse atheists of thinking they know too much as well.
That tendency will arise in a believer simply because they think an all-powerful God can bestow certainty. Agnostics and atheists obviously cannot use that logic.
The believer has an agnostic side that they want to hide from themselves hence their tendency to overreach. They condemn agnosticism in others for they are projecting. It is their own they fear.
There is a difference between them saying they are right full stop or that their belief is. Society will see them as arrogant if they claim to be personally infallible. There is not the same stigma with saying the belief is correct. It just sounds less foolish. The reason is that society tends to see the belief and the persons as separate or the belief as distanced from the person.
Is the difference relevant? No. Either way the believers still announce infallibility.
I will interject that it is better to be good without God than to be good just to please a God who does not exist or may not exist.
Believers in God have an agnostic side.
There is no way of showing that free will exists or probably exists. If there is a loving God, religion says it is us who mess things up not him. But if there is no free will, that argument is meaningless. When they cannot present decent evidence for free will that amounts to being unable to present okay evidence for God.
Countless examples of their agnostic overlaps can be given. For example, the gospels are hearsay and hearsay is not enough to base a God and strong faith on.
Agnostics must not be pressured to believe anything and must be aware that their religious opponents are more agnostic than they would care to admit. If agnosticism is an influence, it is a default influence.
The default for a baby
A baby is not a believer in God. The baby demands and wants cuddles and food. Tacitly, this is, "What I want matters to me and if I knew what God was, I would not put him first. I don't care that he is supposed to be the reason for my existence." We know that the baby cannot say that but babies communicate without being able to talk.
The default here is that the baby is not an atheist but does have overlaps with atheism. There is an indirect instinctive opposition to God.
Many say that the baby is a soft atheist, lacks faith in God. Soft atheism says, "I do not deny God but I simply lack belief." That is implicitly denying that God is real for it does not give him any honour. Hard atheism is stronger, "I directly affirm that God does not exist".
A baby's lack of belief does not imply a position on God or anything. It only tells us what we may consider the baby effectively to be.
The default belief for the person of reason
Antony Flew mentions Anthony Kenny's claim that agnosticism, not atheism, is the default position.
Now if somebody tells you they have had a vision of an alien saviour who wishes to save the world, the default position is that you do not accept it for you have no reason to.
Being agnostic about it means that you will remain open to persuasion by argument and evidence. But the problem is we are not open to such claims. If you are agnostic all the time, you will end up having everything down as 50/50, tooth-fairies, leprechauns and Marian visionaries! There will be no rationality! That is not agnosticism for agnosticism requires an openness to new light and you need rationality for that! Agnosticism taken too far ceases to be agnosticism.
Believers say that God is not in the same category as the vision. But he is. It is people who think they have experienced God in their hearts who have come up with belief in God. That is even more unconvincing than a vision!
Kenny is wrong. The default position then is not agnosticism.
Kenny would add that "atheism is a less modest position than theism, as it rules out more possibilities" than theism does - see page 51, Agnosticism, A Very Short Introduction.
So theism would have more right to be assumed true than atheism because there are many possible understandings of God. For Kenny, debunking and refuting the Christian version of God does not mean there could be a God of a different kind. Kenny thus argues that atheism is not the default.
Kenny fails to recognise that anything other than an all-good and all-perfect God of love upon whom all things depend for everything and who makes all things from nothing is not really a God. It's simple. Atheism is compatible with belief in supernatural beings. It is not true that it drops too many possibilities.
Atheism simply asserts that no being has any moral authority over you and that happens to rule out Yahweh and all those other God beings.
So what should a person pondering the existence of God start with? What default is needed?
It is not agnosticism.
It is not theism.
It is atheism. The basic form of atheism is, "I am not saying there definitely is no God. I am saying that I see no reason for believing and I will live accordingly. I imply then that there is no God."
There is no need to go to the harder version of atheism, "I do not believe there is a God."
Agnosticism - the stopping point?
Suppose Agnosticism is the default belief or assumption.
Are you obligated to go any further? If you are not obligated to find God and believe in him then he is not God. He is not all-good for he is optional. If food is for keeping you alive then it is not optional - you have to get it and eat it. A being that is imperfect or optional cannot be God for he is not in full control and his weaknesses and defects show that there are powers better than him and stronger.
Agnosticism would suggest that we do not worry about God's rules.
Practical atheism or practical agnosticism (same thing) makes God unimportant to our lives and morals even if he commands us to worship and obey him.
This stance sees no correlation between belief in God and living a good life.
If you are obligated to find God then atheism and agnosticism cannot be the default positions. But they plainly are candidates worth considering. Plus we know that unbelief in God is the default. If we deny that we will be teaching morality poorly and be really damaged people.
If you have to be bad to believe in God then that shows that God would not leave evidence that he exists at all.
If it is bad to believe in him then he may be an intelligence but he is not a good being and therefore not God. Thus agnosticism would be your stopping point. It's the default and the only choice.
The assumption
We are told,
"The inquirer must look at the universe and look to see if God exists or not or if it cannot be known. The believer, the atheist and the agnostic has made up their mind already. They have decided what is true before they come to the debate. They therefore cannot argue objectively."
The argument is wrong for it is not true that everybody goes into a debate with their minds already made up.
Agnosticism argues that we must try to avoid assuming there is a God or that there is no God so that we might be unbiased. Assuming would be biased yes. If you have to assume, then agnosticism is the best assumption and reduces bias as much as possible though not completely. So if we cannot avoid assuming, then agnosticism is the default.
And God by definition cannot be important enough to justify assuming he exists. We have to judge what is good regardless of God so even if there is a God he cannot expect to be OUR God. In other words, he cannot expect us to obey him and acknowledge him as authority. Theism is definitely not the default assumption.
If you have to assume then assume agnosticism.
FINALLY
If it's harmful or mistaken to be agnostic then you have to decide between atheism, theism or deism.
We have found that methodological agnosticism is the default for all persons.
We have found that atheism is the default position for babies.
And for adults thinking about the God question.
And if we are talking about an assumption not a belief, agnosticism is the default.
Thankfully assuming is unnecessary. Evidence helps us work out the belief that there is no God. That is to say, evidence from science and philosophy shows that there is probably no God. The default would be that there is to be disbelief in God until the evidence shows we should believe.