I
Agnosticism is a philosophical and theological
concept
which has been understood in various ways by different
philosophers and theologians. T. H. Huxley coined the
term in 1869, and its
first home was in the disputes
about science and religion, naturalism and
super-
naturalism, that reached a
climax during the nineteenth
century. To be an agnostic is to hold that
nothing can
be known or at least that it is very unlikely that any-
thing will be known or soundly believed
concerning
whether God or any transcendent reality or state exists.
It is very natural for certain people conditioned in
certain ways to believe
that there must be some power
“behind,”
“beyond,” or “underlying” the
universe
which is responsible for its order and all the incredible
features that are observed and studied by the sciences
even though these
same people will readily grant that
we do not know that there is such a
power or have
good grounds for believing that there is such a power.
While the admission of ignorance concerning things
divine is usually made
by someone outside the circle
of faith, it can and indeed has been made by
fideistic
Jews and Christians as well.
Some writers, e.g., Robert Flint and James Ward,
so construed
“agnosticism” that (1) it was identified
with
“philosophical skepticism” and (2) it allowed for
there being “theistic agnostics” and “Christian
agnos-
tics.” However, the more
typical employment of “ag-
nosticism” is such that it would not be correct to count
as agnostics either fideistic believers or Jews and Chris-
tians who claim that we can only gain knowledge of
God through some mystical awareness or “ineffable
knowledge.” It surely was this standard but more cir-
cumscribed sense of
“agnosticism” that William James
had in mind when he made his famous remark in his
essay
“The Will to Believe” that agnosticism was the
worst
thing that “ever came out of the philosopher's
workshop.” Without implying or suggesting any sup-
port at all for James's value judgment, we shall
construe
agnosticism in this rather more typical manner. Given
this
construal (1) “theistic agnosticism” is a contra-
diction and thus one cannot be a Jew
or a Christian
and be an agnostic and (2) also agnosticism is neutral
vis-à-vis the claim that there can
be no philosophical
knowledge or even scientific or common-sense knowl-
edge. We shall then take agnosticism to
be the more
limited claim that we either do not or cannot know
that
God or any other transcendent reality or state
exists and thus we should
suspend judgment concerning
the assertion that God exists. That is to say,
the agnostic
neither affirms nor denies it. This, as should be evident
from the above characterization, can take further
specification and indeed
later such specifications will
be supplied. But such a construal captures
in its char-
acterization both what was
essentially at issue in the
great agnostic debates in the nineteenth
century and
the issue as it has come down to us.
