Agnosticism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agnosticism concerns the withholding of a person’s judgment, or belief, on a matter. Such withholding entails neither believing in favor of nor believing against a phenomenon in question. With regard to the question of God’s existence, for instance, an agnostic would believe neither that God exists nor that God does not exist. Agnosticism can be directed toward any alleged phenomenon. It need not be limited to the issue of God’s existence. It thus is equivalent to skepticism. One might be agnostic about the external world, minds, God, non-physical entities, causal relations, and future truths, among other things. Sextus Empiricus (fl. c. 150 CE), David Hume (1711-1776), and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) have supported influential versions of agnosticism.

Cognitive agnosticism about an alleged entity (say, God) entails that, owing to counterbalanced or at least highly mixed evidence, one should withhold belief regarding the proposition that God exists. That is, one should neither believe that God exists nor believe that God does not exist. Doxastic agnosticism about God, in contrast, entails that one actually withholds belief regarding the proposition that God exists. A doxastic agnostic can consistently say: I withhold judgment whether God exists, but I have no commitment regarding the status of the overall available evidence on the matter. So a person could be a doxastic agnostic without being a cognitive agnostic. Cognitive agnostics about God, however, are logically required to recommend doxastic agnosticism about God, at least on cognitive grounds, even if they fail at times actually to withhold judgment regarding God’s existence.

A common motivation for agnosticism regarding an issue is a concern to avoid error or at least to minimize the risk of error in one’s beliefs. The concern is that if relevant evidence is highly mixed, then in answering either yes or no to a question, one seriously risks falling into error, that is, false belief. The better alternative, according to agnostics, is to refrain from answering either yes or no, that is, to withhold judgment. Refraining from believing that something exists while refraining from believing that it does not exist can save one from mistaken belief. There is, however, a price to pay: One will then miss out on an opportunity to acquire truth in the area in question. For instance, it is true either that God exists or that God does not exist. Agnostics in principle forgo acquiring a truth in this area of reality.

Agnostics about the issue of God’s existence do not endorse atheism about God. They do not affirm that God does not exist; nor do they propose that our overall available evidence indicates that God does not exist. Agnostics hold that (at least for their own situation) atheism goes too far in the negative direction, just as (they hold for at least their own situation) theism goes too far in the positive direction. Theism, like agnosticism and atheism, can be either cognitive or doxastic. Doxastic theists hold that God exists. Cognitive theists hold that, owing to the overall available evidence, one should believe that God exists. Agnostics hold that, at least for their own situation, theism and atheism go too far, positively or negatively, in the area of belief.

An underlying assumption of cognitive agnosticism is that God’s existence would need to be more obvious to justify acknowledgment. This assumption has given rise to extensive contemporary discussion about divine hidden-ness and elusiveness. The discussion shows no sign of ending any time soon.

SEE ALSO Atheism; Monotheism; Reality; Religion; Theism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Copan, Paul, and Paul K. Moser, eds. 2003. The Rationality of Theism. London: Routledge.

Greco, John, ed. 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Paul K. Moser, eds. 2002. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Moser, Paul K. 1993. Philosophy after Objectivity: Making Sense in Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

Paul K. Moser

AGNOSTICISM

AGNOSTICISM, denying that human beings can know if God exists, emerged in the 1860s and 1870s as the opinion of a small but influential minority of religiously serious, well-read Americans. Many belonged to the class of writers, academics, and scientists soon labeled "intellectuals." They commonly enjoyed relatively high economic and social status. The word "agnosticism" itself was coined in 1869 (from Greek roots denoting "un-known") by the English scientist Thomas Huxley, and American agnosticism closely tracked similar, somewhat earlier tendencies among British bourgeois intelligentsia. Several of the most prominent early American agnostics—such as the scholar and cultural critic Charles Eliot Norton, the journalist E. L. Godkin, the historian Henry Adams, and the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.—were deeply entwined in transatlantic webs of friendships that linked the two countries' intellectual life. And as these names suggest, agnosticism first developed in the United States among urban northeasterners.

Agnosticism was not so much a positive belief as a negative conclusion. Victorian agnostics wished to apply to all questions of knowledge what they took to be the criteria of the natural and human sciences. To decide matters of fact by any other standard they characteristically regarded as immoral—a credo classically articulated in the 1870s by the English mathematician William Clifford: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." That agnostics readily carried this principle into religious issues can be explained not only by widespread faith in science but more specifically by the fact that for two centuries theological writers had enlisted science to prove religious belief. That this hoary scientific apologetic foundered after 1860 owed much to contraction by scientists of what counted as scientific evidence, a restriction associated especially with Darwinism. In ensuing decades, a growing number of Americans weighed the evidence for the existence of God and concluded that nothing approaching scientific evidence existed to prove a God.

Typically, agnostics bore no grudge against those who did retain faith in God. Although agnostics tended to see themselves as clearer thinkers and more rigorous moralists, they rarely trumpeted their unbelief or publicly attacked the churches. In this, agnosticism was unlike atheism, actively denying God. Atheism in both the United States and Europe flowed from dislike of organized religion, and atheists—their outrage at "priestcraft" often stoked by class resentment—were usually anticlericals. Lacking powerful established churches to resent, the United States proved much less fertile ground for atheism than did Europe, and agnosticism became the more common form of unbelief.

Agnosticism was entrenched in American culture by 1900, although the vast majority of Americans have continued to believe in God. Unbelief has probably remained chiefly an opinion of intellectual elites, especially academic ones. Unlike atheists, agnostics have rarely felt any need to institutionalize their views (the Ethical Culture movement was a rare exception, founded in 1876 by Felix Adler). To invent a structure to house a lack of beliefs perhaps seemed oxymoronic. Hence, agnosticism did not really evolve intellectually after establishing itself (except among academic philosophers) but rather in the twentieth century blended into low-key religious indifferentism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Turner, James. Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Un-belief in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

JamesTurner

See alsoAtheism ; Science and Religion, Relations of .

Agnosticism (Gk., a + gnōstos, ‘not know’). A position distinguished from theism and atheism equally, by its view that neither in principle nor in fact is it possible to know God's nature or even whether he exists. In its broadest sense, agnosticism is compatible with deep religious commitment, as in the case of Nicholas of Cusa or of Henry Mansel (1820–71); in its narrower and more specific sense, however, it normally implies a certain detachment in matters religious. The term itself was coined by T. H. Huxley (1825–95), who defined its basic principles as repudiation of all metaphysical speculation and of most Christian doctrine as unproven or unprovable, and the application of scientific method to the study of all matters of fact and experience.

agnosticism , form of skepticism that holds that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or disproved. Among prominent agnostics have been Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and T. H. Huxley (who coined the word agnostic in 1869). Immanuel Kant was an agnostic who argued that belief in divinity can rest only on faith. Agnosticism is not to be confused with atheism , which asserts that there is no God.

ag·nos·tic / agˈnästik/ • n. a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God. • adj. of or relating to agnostics or agnosticism. DERIVATIVES: ag·nos·ti·cism / -təˌsizəm/ n.

agnostic a person holding the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God or anything beyond material phenomena. The word is recorded from the mid 19th century, and comes from a- ‘not’ + gnostic ‘of or relating to knowledge’; it was coined by the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) to describe his own beliefs.

agnosticism Philosophical viewpoint according to which it is impossible either to demonstrate or refute the existence of a supreme being or ultimate cause on the basis of available evidence. It was particularly associated with the rationalism of Thomas Huxley and is used as a reasoned basis for the rejection of both Christianity and atheism.

agnosticism. As commonly understood, the view that we cannot know whether there is a God or not.

agnostic XIX. f. A-4 + GNOSTIC; invented by T. H. Huxley.

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