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The TRUTH Staff on: Agnosticism
by The TRUTH Staff
Many people these days classify themselves as Agnostic. But it is a personal belief of mine that most people don’t know about agnosticism and I am going to be so bold as to say that Agnosticism doesn’t even exist by itself.The word agnostic comes from the Greek ‘a-’ which means not and ‘gignOskein’ which means to know. So agnostic means not to know or unknown. Thomas Huxley, an English botanist, first coined the word as a joke in 1869. There were so many ‘-ists’ in the world (atheist, theist, pantheists, deists, ect...) that he was a ‘I-can’t-know-ist’. Most people think that agnosticism is neutral but it isn’t, you can’t sit on the fence here, you must commit one way or the other.
People who think they are agnostic, in my opinion, really aren’t. ‘Agnostic’ isn’t really a noun, able to be used as a single entity. Agnostic is really an adjective, describing one of two nouns. If you are an agnostic theist then you believe that there is a god but we can’t comprehend the nature of that god. If you are an agnostic atheist then you don’t know if there is a god or not but you don’t acknowledge one. ‘Agnostic theist’ and ‘agnostic atheist’ can be, in some eyes, interchanged with ‘weak theist’ and ‘weak atheist’.
Many people don’t agree with these findings of mine but I would just like to offer another view to people. I do, although, strongly think that people should at least think about other views and keep their minds open.