Neil deGrasse Tyson — "I'm not an atheist. I'm an agnostic. I don't know what's out there, and neither …"
I'm not an atheist. I'm an agnostic. I don't know what's out there, and neither do you.
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More from Neil deGrasse Tyson
"If you want to know what it means to be alive, look at the stars."
"Earth is a small planet, and we are not alone. We are not alone in the universe, and we are not alone on this planet."
"My biggest fear is that people will stop being curious. That they'll stop asking questions, and just accept what they're told."
"I've never been able to get into science fiction as much as I'd like, because I find that most of it breaks the laws of physics."
"Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the great forces of human nature."
About Neil deGrasse Tyson (born 1958)
American astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey host who carries the Carl Sagan public-science mantle. Closely associated with Bill Nye (fellow science communicator) and Brian Greene (theoretical physicist and string-theory popularizer). For an intellectual contrast, see Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum — Ham's career has been organized around defending biblical 6-day creationism — exactly the science-education position Tyson's mainstream-science communication is structured to refute.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker refuses to claim certainty about whether God or supernatural forces exist. Agnosticism acknowledges the limits of human knowledge rather than asserting definitive belief or disbelief. The pointed 'neither do you' challenges anyone who claims absolute certainty on either side, positioning intellectual humility as more honest than confident declarations about questions that remain fundamentally beyond current human verification or proof.
Relevance to Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tyson built his career on empirical evidence and scientific rigor at the American Museum of Natural History and through shows like Cosmos. As an astrophysicist who studies the universe's vast unknowns, he embodies epistemic humility professionally. He has repeatedly clashed with both religious dogmatists and militant atheists, insisting science demands acknowledging what we genuinely do not know rather than filling gaps with convenient certainty.
The era
Tyson operates in an era of sharp culture-war battles between organized religion and the New Atheist movement, whose figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens dominated public discourse from the mid-2000s onward. His refusal to join either camp resonated in a polarized media landscape where nuanced positions get drowned out. Simultaneously, cosmology was revealing genuinely humbling mysteries: dark matter, dark energy, and cosmic inflation remained unexplained.
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