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An agnostic believes that something is impossible to know one way or the other. The word was coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869. Essentrially, an agnostic seperates fact from fiction by the lack of evidence in support of a diety or any other difficult belief. They are not fence sitters or people that can't make up their minds, but individuals that argue that there is no evidence to support a claim such as religious belief in a diety. A lot of people choose to believe because they want to, but there is absolutely no evidence to support that belief.
| 13 years ago. Rating: 3 | |
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.[1][2] Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions. In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the difference between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief. In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively. In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist. Within agnosticism there are agnostic atheists (who do not believe any deity exists, but do not deny it as a possibility) and agnostic theists (who believe a deity exists but do not claim it as personal knowledge).
Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word agnostic in 1869.[3] However, earlier thinkers and written works have promoted agnostic points of view. They include Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher,[4] and the Nasadiya Sukta creation myth in the Rig Veda, an ancient Sanskrit text.[5] Since Huxley coined the term, many other thinkers have written extensively about agnosticism.
| 13 years ago. Rating: 1 | |
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