Agnostic


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The word agnostic comes from agnosticism.  Agnosticism is often defined as the view that the existence of God, or the divine, or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. In other words, we can never be sure of the existence of these things, nor can we definitively deny them.

However, strictly speaking, agnosticism is the doctrine that states that humans cannot know of the existence of anything outside of their own experience. The word was first used in coined in 1869 by T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical  Society in London. Huxley was a biologist and he was pushing forward Darwin’s theory of evolution. Agnosticism, to him, was a rejection of Gnosticism, which claimed great knowledge of the very things Huxley himself believed he could not
possibly know, especially of the spiritual world.

However, the term agnosticism today is used colloquially to refer to skepticism about religious subjects in general.

Now that we have the background out of the way, we can get to the meaning of the word agnostic as it is now used in English.

Meaning Of Agnostic

An agnostic is most often defined as a person who is skeptical about the existence of God or a god. Such a person neither believes nor disbelieves that a god exists, they simply say that they do not know, and further, they may believe that it is impossible to know. In other words, not only do they not know, but they are not capable of knowing.

“In my youth, I always went to church because my parents made me go, but I was always agnostic, even then.”

Now, although this next sense of the word agnostic is rarely used colloquially, it refers, less specifically, to a person who holds the view that anything beyond natural observable phenomena cannot be known by humans.

In other words, we can never know anything about an ultimate reality beyond the material universe that our senses can detect, or the supernatural, or the existence of an almighty being, etc.

An agnostic may be confused with an atheist. An atheist is a person who believes that God, or a god, does not exist.

“Just because you accept evolution, or science in general, does not mean you are an agnostic or atheist.”

“Carl Sagan described himself as an agnostic. He believed that the question of God’s existence is outside the purview of science.”

To be agnostic can also mean to have a doubtful or noncommittal attitude toward a specific thing.

Note that in all cases the word agnostic can be used as a noun, an agnostic, or an adjective.

A person is either ‘an agnostic’ or agnostic about something.

“I’m fairly agnostic about the chances we will ever abolish the electoral college.”

In regards to technology, especially computing, agnostic refers to hardware or software that is compatible with many types of platforms or operating systems.

Unless you work in computers or information technology, you probably don’t need to be concerned with this use of the word.

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