Agnosticism

(From Greek, "unknowable"), strictly speaking, the doctrine that man cannot know
the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of his experience. The term has come to be
euated in popular parlance with skepticism (.!.) about religious uestions in general, and
in particular with the re"ection of traditional #hristian beliefs under the impact of modern
scientific thought.
$ brief treatment of agnosticism follows. For full treatment, see %eligious and &piritual 'elief,
&ystems of( $gnosticism.
$gnosticism both as a term and as a philosophical position gained currency through its espousal
by Thomas )uxley, who seems to ha!e coined the word agnostic (as opposed to "gnostic") in
*+,- to designate one who repudiated traditional .udeo/#hristian theism and yet disclaimed
doctrinaire atheism, transcending both in order to lea!e such uestions as the existence of God in
abeyance.
From this definition and from the way the word has been used in ordinary speech it is e!ident that
there are two related but ne!ertheless distinct !iewpoints suggested by the term agnosticism. 0t
may mean no more than the suspension of "udgment on ultimate uestions because not all the
e!idence has come in or because not all the e!idence can e!er come in. $s doubt has been a path
to faith in the thought of men such as &t. $ugustine, 1ascal, and 2ierkegaard, so agnosticism in
this sense may be applied to the biblical interpretation of man3s relation to God.
'ut )uxley3s own elaboration on the term makes clear that this !ery biblical interpretation of
man3s relation to God was the intended polemic target of agnosticism. The suspension of
"udgment on ultimate uestions for which it called was thought to in!alidate #hristian beliefs
about "things hoped for" and "things not seen." )uxley3s role in the struggle o!er the teachings of
#harles 4arwin helped to establish this connotation as the primary one in the definition of
agnosticism. 5hen such prominent defenders of the 4arwinian hypothesis as #larence 4arrow
likewise labelled themsel!es as agnostics, the writers of popular apologetic pamphlets found it
easy to euate agnosticism with hostility to con!entional #hristian tenets.
'y the second half of the 67th century, howe!er, the field of the battle had shifted. 8ot the
uestion of #hristian e!idences but the problem of e!idence and !erification as such had become
the central issue among philosophers. Thus logical positi!ism, which bore certain resemblances
to agnosticism in its refusal to speculate about ultimate and unknowable uestions, also went
beyond the agnosticism of )uxley.
Systems of Religious and Spiritual Belief
Agnosticism
The word agnosticism was first publicly coined in *+,- at a meeting of the 9etaphysical &ociety
in :ondon by T.). )uxley, a 'ritish biologist and champion of the 4arwinian theory of
e!olution. )e coined it as a suitable label for his own position. "0t came into my head as
suggesti!ely antithetical to the 3Gnostic3 of #hurch history who professed to know so much
about the !ery things of which 0 was ignorant."
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)uxley3s statement brings out both the fact that agnosticism has something to do with not
knowing, and that this not knowing refers particularly to the sphere of religious doctrine.
<tymology, howe!er, and now common usage, do permit less limited uses of the term. The &o!iet
leader :enin, for instance, in his 9aterialism and <mpirio/#riticism (*-7+), distinguished the
extremes of true 9aterialism on the one hand and the bold 0dealism of George 'erkeley, an *+th/
century 0dealist, on the other. )e recogni>ed as attempted halfway houses between them the
"agnosticisms" of the &cottish &keptic 4a!id )ume and the great German critical philosopher
0mmanuel 2ant//agnosticisms that here consisted in their contentions about the unknowability
of the nature, or e!en the existence, of "things/in/themsel!es" (realities beyond appearances).
)uxley3s nonreligious agnosticism.
The essence of )uxley3s agnosticism//and his statement, as the in!entor of the term, must be
peculiarly authoritati!e//was not a profession of total ignorance, nor e!en of total ignorance
within one special but !ery large sphere? rather, he insisted, it was "not a creed but a method, the
essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle," !i>., to follow reason "as
far as it can take you"? but then, when you ha!e established as much as you can, frankly and
honestly to recogni>e the limits of your knowledge. 0t is the same principle as that later
proclaimed in an essay on "The <thics of 'elief" (*+@,) by the 'ritish mathematician and
philosopher of science 5.2. #lifford( "0t is wrong always, e!erywhere and for e!eryone to
belie!e anything upon insufficient e!idence." $pplied by )uxley to fundamental #hristian
claims, this principle yields characteristically skeptical conclusions( speaking, for example, of the
$pocrypha (ancient scriptural writings excluded from the biblical canon), he wrote(
"One may suspect that a little more critical discrimination would have enlarged the Apocrypha
not inconsiderably." In the same spirit, Sir eslie Stephen, !"th#century literary critic and
historian of thought, in An Agnostic$s Apology, and Other %ssays &!'"(), reproached those who
pretended to delineate "the nature of *od Almighty with an accuracy from which modest
naturalists would shrin+ in describing the genesis of a blac+ beetle."
$gnosticism in its primary reference is commonly contrasted with atheism thus( "The $theist
asserts that there is no God, whereas the $gnostic maintains only that he does not know." This
distinction, howe!er, is in two respects misleading( first, )uxley himself certainly re"ected as
outright false//rather than as not known to be true or false//many widely popular !iews about
God, his pro!idence, and man3s posthumous destiny? and second, if this were the crucial
distinction, agnosticism would for almost all practical purposes be the same as atheism. 0t was
indeed on this misunderstanding that )uxley and his associates were attacked both by
enthusiastic #hristian polemicists and by Friedrich <ngels, the co/worker of 2arl 9arx, as
"shame/faced atheists," a description that is perfectly applicable to many of those who nowadays
adopt the more comfortable label.
$gnosticism, moreo!er, is not the same as &kepticism, which, in the comprehensi!e and classical
form epitomi>ed by the ancient Greek &keptic &extus <mpiricus (6nd and Ard centuries $4),
confidently challenges not merely religious or metaphysical knowledge but all knowledge claims
that !enture beyond immediate experience. $gnosticism is, as &kepticism surely could not be,
compatible with the approach of 1ositi!ism, which emphasi>es the achie!ements and possibilities
of natural and social science//though most agnostics, including )uxley, ha!e nonetheless
harboured reser!es about the more authoritarian and eccentric features of the system of $uguste
#omte, the *-th/century founder of 1ositi!ism.
%eligious agnosticism.
0t is also possible to speak of a religious agnosticism. 'ut if this expression is not to be
contradictory, it has to be taken to refer to an acceptance of the agnostic principle, combined
either with a con!iction that at least some minimum of affirmati!e doctrine can be established on
adeuate grounds, or else with the sort of religion or religiousness that makes no !ery substantial
or disputatious doctrinal demands. 0f these two !arieties of agnosticism be admitted, then
)uxley3s original agnosticism may be marked off from the latter as (not religious but) secular and
from the former as (not religious but) atheist//construing "atheist" here as a word as wholly
negati!e and neutral as "atypical" or "asymmetrical." These, without pe"orati!e insinuations,
mean merely "not typical" or "not symmetrical" (the atheist is thus one who is simply without a
belief in God).
)uxley himself allowed for the possibility of an agnosticism that was in these senses religious//
e!en #hristian//as opposed to atheist. Thus, in another *++- essay "$gnosticism and
#hristianity," he contrasted "scientific theology," with which "agnosticism has no uarrel," with
"<cclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours across the #hannel call it, #lericalism"? and his complaint
against the latter3s proponents was not that they reach substanti!e conclusions different from his
own but that they maintain "that it is morally wrong not to belie!e certain propositions, whate!er
the results of strict scientific in!estigation of the e!idence of these propositions." The second
possibility, that of an agnosticism that is religious as opposed to secular, was reali>ed perhaps
most strikingly in the 'uddha (Gautama). Typically and traditionally, the ecclesiastical #hristian
has insisted that absolute certainty about some minimum appro!ed list of propositions concerning
God and the general di!ine scheme of things was wholly necessary to sal!ation. <ually
typically, according to the tradition, the 'uddha sidestepped all such speculati!e uestions. $t
best they could only distract attention from the urgent business of sal!ation//sal!ation, of course,
in his own !ery different interpretation.
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0t is con!enient to distinguish the antecedents of secular agnosticism from those of religious
agnosticism.
$ntecedents of secular agnosticism.
The ancestry of modern secular and atheist agnosticism may be traced back to the &ophists and to
&ocrates in the Bth century '#? not, of course, the "&ocrates" of 1lato3s %epublic//the would/be
founding father of an ideal totalitarian state//but the shadowy historical &ocrates supposedly
hailed by the oracle of $pollo3s 4elphi as the wisest of men//who knew what, and how much, he
did not know. 'ut the most important and immediate source of such agnostic ideas was surely
)ume, while )ume3s successor 2ant may well be seen as the prime philosophical inspirer of
religious reactions against them.
)uxley, as noted abo!e, demanded that a thinker recogni>e and accept the limits of his
knowledge. 0n taking it that these limits do not include either the findings of a general positi!e
natural theology or the contents of a particular special di!ine re!elation, )uxley was accepting a
)umean critiue. (0t is significant that )uxley3s study of )ume was the most sympathetic
appraisal to be published in the *-th century.) )ume3s critiue is found in his <nuiry #oncerning
)uman ;nderstanding (first published in *@C+ under another title), which attempts, in the
manner of :ocke and later 2ant, to determine the limits of man3s possible knowledge, and in his
posthumous 4ialogues #oncerning 8atural %eligion (*@@-).
Two sections of the <nuiry refer directly to these limits( "=f a 1articular 1ro!idence and of a
Future &tate" and "=f 9iracles." 0n the first, )ume starts from his basic <mpiricist claims( that,
generally, "matters of fact and real existence" cannot be known a priori (prior to and apart from
experience)? and that, particularly, one cannot know a priori that any thing or kind of thing either
must be or cannot be the cause of any other thing or kind of thing. These considerations dispose
of all the classical arguments for the existence of God other than the argument to design//that the
structure and order of the uni!erse and its constituents implies a design and a designer. 'ut here,
)ume urges, argument from experience can find no purchase because both the supposed effect,
the uni!erse as a whole, and the putati!e cause, God, are essentially uniue and incomparable.
:ater, in his 4ialogues, he de!elops the suggestion//which he acknowledges as stemming from
the Ard/century/'# philosopher &trato of :ampsacus, next but one after $ristotle as head of his
:yceum//that whate!er order man discerns should be attributed to the uni!erse itself and not to
any postulated outside cause.
0n the section "=f 9iracles," )ume takes his stand on the agnostic principle( "$ wise man . . .
proportions his belief to the e!idence." )e then argues that no attempt to appeal to the alleged
occurrence of miracles//concei!ed as authoritati!e endorsements by a power beyond and greater
than nature//can succeed in establishing the truth of a claim to constitute special di!ine
re!elation. )ume3s distincti!e contribution here is methodological( the contention that the
principles and presuppositions upon which the critical historian must rely, in first interpreting the
remains of the past as historical e!idence and in then building up from this e!idence his account
of what actually happened, are such as to make it impossible for him "to pro!e a miracle and
make it a "ust foundation for any such system of religion."
0n this two/phase attack, )ume challenged what was in his day, and long remained, the standard
framework for systematic #hristian apologetics. 0ndeed, the contrary contentions//of the
possibilities, both of de!eloping a positi!e natural theology and of establishing the authenticity of
a supposed re!elation by disco!ering endorsing miracles//were defined as essential and
constituti!e dogmas of %oman #atholicism by decrees of the first Datican #ouncil of *+,-/@7.
0n !iew of the future history of 5estern thought, it must be emphasi>ed that )ume3s position, like
2ant3s, was (officially) that knowledge in this area is practically impossible. This thesis is
stronger than that of those who simply confess that they "ust do not know(
The God/men say when die go sky
Through pearly gates where ri!er flow,
The God/men say when die we fly
.ust like eagle, hawk and crow//
9ight be, might be? 0 don3t know.
($boriginal song from the 8orthern Territory, $ustralia.)
Eet )ume3s thesis was, on the other hand, weaker than that of his 67th/century neo/)umean
successors, the logical positi!ists of the Dienna #ircle, who held that any talk about a
transcendent God must be "without literal significance." This !iew was presented brilliantly, and
in an uncompromisingly drastic form, by $... $yer in his :anguage, Truth and :ogic (6nd ed.,
*-C,). &imilar conclusions were reached less high/handedly by se!eral contributors to 8ew
<ssays in 1hilosophical Theology (ed. by $. Flew and $. 9ac0ntyre, *-BB).
Antecedents of religious agnosticism.
:ooking backward, it is possible now to see what )ume himself did not know//that his attack on
the possibility of a positi!e natural theology had to a considerable extent been anticipated by
*Cth/century #hristian &cholastics( generally, by 5illiam of =ckham? and, with particular
reference to the lack of a priori knowledge of causal relations, by 8icholas of $utrecourt.
The claims of )ume and 2ant//and, indeed, those of the logical positi!ists and their successors//
about the practical, or theoretical, impossibility of such knowledge should also be compared with
the long traditions of "negati!e theology." &uch a theology maintains that the nature of God
passes so far beyond the comprehension of any creature that God must be characteri>ed largely or
entirely by indirection//as 0nfinite, as 0ncomparable, and so on. Thus Thomas $uinas, the
foremost &cholastic of the *Ath century//who contri!ed on other occasions to tell his readers as
much as his most practical church could wish about the deeds, plans, and demands of the
0neffable//ne!ertheless had his agnostic moments as well. 'ut he did elaborate a doctrine of so/
called analogical predication designed to show how it is possible for finite creatures to say and to
understand something positi!e about God by means of comparisons with known entities or
ualities. 'y contrast, the *6th/century philosopher 9oses 9aimonides, often dubbed
anachronistically "the .ewish $uinas," had been much more drastic than his successor, "the
#hristian 9aimonides," in his insistence that e!erything that can be truly said about the #reator//
not excluding the proposition that he exists//has to be construed as purely negati!e.
$lthough it is clearly possible to speak of a religious agnosticism without self/contradiction, the
foregoing considerations suggest the difficulty of intermingling religious and agnostic concerns.
The easiest case is that in which the religion is altogether without metaphysical content( thus, one
of )uxley3s biographers reports that the *-th/century &cottish sage Thomas #arlyle "taught him
that a deep sense of religion was compatible with an entire absence of theology." The next
simplest case is that in which worship is combined with a total noncommitment about the
attributes of the ob"ect of worship(
,e is not a male- ,e is not a female- ,e is not a neuter.
,e is not to be seen- ,e neither is nor is not.
.hen ,e is sought ,e will ta+e the form in which
,e is sought.
It is indeed difficult to describe the name of the ord.
(1oem from the Telugu, inscribed on a cult ob"ect in the %oyal =ntario 9useum.)
0n its original setting this expression of a )indu piety has power and charm. Eet its intellectual
inadeuacy becomes manifest when the doctrine of the ;nknowable in the broad synthetic
system of )erbert &pencer, a late/*-th/century e!olutionary philosopher, is recalled. For to
affirm, as &pencer did, the existence of a being about whom absolutely nothing else can be said is
a rather comical hypostati>ation (taking of an abstraction as real), which is surely indiscernible
from affirming no being at all. 8or, perhaps, is it any great impro!ement to a!er that much else
can indeed be said about him, but only in words that here must bear an extraordinary meaning//
unless, of course, those meanings can be specified. 0t was the suggestion that the goodness of
God might thus be goodness in a uite unusual sense//what would elsewhere be called badness//
that pro!oked the ire of .ohn &tuart 9ill, a mid/*-th/century <mpiricist, against certain
de!elopments from &ir 5illiam )amilton3s "1hilosophy of the ;nconditioned." 9ill wrote( "0
will call no being good, who is not what 0 mean when 0 apply that epithet to my fellow creatures."
The third, and surely the most promising, way in which the reconciliation may be attempted is by
essaying some distinction between the essence or the internal nature of God and his external
relations with the creation. 0t may then be suggested that, whereas man3s knowledge of the former
must be at least exiguous and at worst simply lacking, he can ne!ertheless know as much as he
needs to know about the latter. $s to the rest, he should be re!erently agnostic.
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5hat cannot, howe!er, by any means be suared with agnosticism in )uxley3s sense are attempts
to transmute the !ery limitations of human knowledge into grounds for accepting some wholly
une!idenced faith. &uch transmutations ha!e been made in the interests of many mutually
irreconcilable systems, and they apparently remain perennially attracti!e to thinkers with a
different understanding of the ethics of belief.
&t. $ugustine of )ippo, near the end of the Bth century, felt the challenge of classical &kepticism
in #icero3s $cademica and 4e natura deorum ("=n the 8ature of the Gods") and ga!e his
response in #ontra academicos ("$gainst the $cademics"). &kepticism, he thought, can be
o!ercome only by re!elation. The orthodox 9uslim philosopher and mystic al/Gha>ali (late **
th
century) deployed &keptical arguments similarly, as a propaedeutic, or study preparatory to the
acceptance of his ri!al re!elation. 5ith the redisco!ery in the *,th century of the works of &extus
<mpiricus, a course of &kepticism became commonly a preliminary to fideist commitment.
Fideism is the thesis that truth in religion is accessible only to faith. The course persuaded the
inuirer that reason cannot attain truth? yet certainty in true religious belief was still thought
absolutely necessary for sal!ation. 9artin :uther was speaking for his times (first half of the *,th
century) when he thundered against the extremely cautious and restricted agnosticism of
4esiderius <rasmus, foremost figure of the northern %enaissance( "&piritus sanctus non est
&kepticus" ("The )oly &pirit is not a &keptic").
The only resort was, it seemed, faith( whether the easygoing %oman #atholic faith of the *,th/
century &keptic 9ichel de 9ontaigne? the polemical #ounter/%eformation fer!our of his
contemporary Gentian )er!et, !eteran of the #ouncil of Trent and :atin translator of the
$d!ersus mathematicos (*B,-? "$gainst the 1undits") of &extus <mpiricus? or, one century later,
the !estigial )uguenot loyalty of 1ierre 'ayle//stocker of a great arsenal of secular argument, the
4ictionnaire historiue et critiue (*,-B/-@).
The decisi!e ob"ection to any and e!ery such rationally unfounded flight into faith was posed by
.ohn :ocke, the *@th/century 'ritish <mpiricist, who set a tone of coolly unfer!ent $nglicanism
for the following century(
5e may as well doubt of our being, as we can whether any re!elation from God be true. &o
that faith is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and lea!es no room for doubt or
hesitation. =nly we must be sure that it be a di!ine re!elation, and that we understand it right(
else we shall expose oursel!es to all the extra!agancy of enthusiasm, and all the error of wrong
principles . . . ($n <ssay #oncerning )uman ;nderstanding, 'ook 0D, ch. x!i, *C).
9any thinkers ha!e agreed that it is all !ery well to depreciate the potentialities of unaided
natural reason and to insist that if man is to ha!e any knowledge of God this must depend largely
or wholly upon whate!er special steps God may ha!e taken to re!eal himself? and they ha!e also
agreed that, if man3s commitment of faith is not to be arbitrary and fri!olous, then he clearly must
ha!e some good reason for belie!ing, first, that there is a God who has so re!ealed himself, and,
second, that his preferred candidate//and not one of its innumerable ri!als//truly is that
re!elation.
These points are crucial//both for the appreciation of the history of ideas and for a reasonable
contemporary understanding. #learly, they were upheld by $uinas, who in the &umma contra
gentiles//before proceeding to present his own reasons for accepting #hristianity, rather than
0slam, as the authentic re!elation//applied that same word fri!olous to any such unsupportable
commitment. $gain, .udah ha/:e!i, an early *6th/century .ewish poet and philosopher, has been
authoritati!ely described as "concerned to bring men to a mystical and non/rational appreciation
of religious truths" by his &keptical attacks on the established $ristotelian natural theology. Eet
ha/:e!i3s main work, entitled 2u>ari( The 'ook of 1roof and $rgument in 4efence of the
4espised Faith, does in fact offer rational e!idences of the truth of .udaism.
&keptical propaedeutics to faith are now out of fashion. 'ut the same challenge applies to all of
the !arious responses to 2ant3s famous in!itation( "0 ha!e found it necessary to deny knowledge
in order to make room for faith" (1reface to the #ritiue of 1ure %eason). 8atural theology may,
indeed, for )ume3s reasons as reinforced by 2ant, be impossible. The way of religious disco!ery
may indeed be mystical experience, personal encounter with the di!ine Thou, or whate!er else.
'ut there is, and can be, no substitute for a man3s ha!ing some sound grounds for identifying his
experience not only as really mystical but also as experience of the real God? for holding his faith
in some putati!e re!elation not only to be real religious faith but also to be faith in a genuine
re!elation of the %eal? and so on.
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$nyone who insists on the foregoing touchstones may still be agnostic as well as religious. 5hat
cannot consist with agnosticism is a calculated commitment to faith seen as altogether without
e!idential warrant. The classic example of such commitment was pro!ided in the *@th century by
the 5ager $rgument of the French mathematician 'laise 1ascal, who assumed, for the sake of the
argument, that "reason can decide nothing here" and then urged that the only sane bet is %oman
#atholicism? for we ha!e nothing but this one short life to lose, and all eternity to win.
1ascal3s 5ager $rgument is unsound because, on its own stated assumption of total and
inescapable ignorance, the gambler is not entitled to limit the betting options to two//and to one
particular two, at that. $ similarly parochial inattention to the !ariety of candidacies for belief has
characteri>ed most fideists. Thus &Fren 2ierkegaard, an influential mid/*-th/century 4anish lay
theologian, happily glorified the essential irrationality of religious faith, while taking it always
that faith will, of course, be 1rotestant. <lsewhere, 1ascal himself did notice, and tried to meet,
some of the competition? his neglect here is the more remarkable because his wager was
originally imported into #hristendom from 0slam (see 9iguel 1alacios, :os precedentes de 1ari
de 1ascal). 5hat makes it a landmark is that it constituted a direct, reasoned re"ection of the
agnostic principleGa re"ection in which the reason proposed for belie!ing was explicitly a
moti!e for self/persuasion rather than some e!idence of truth. Thus, when 5illiam .ames, a pre/
5orld 5ar 0 $merican psychologist and philosopher, in The 5ill to 'elie!e, de!eloped the best
known systematic attack on that principle it was, rightly, 1ascal whom he hailed as his first
inspiration. .ames distinguished those hypotheses that, for any indi!idual, represent
psychologically "li!e options" from those that do not, and he urged that, when e!idential grounds
are lacking, the choice may properly be determined by one3s passional nature. For men often ha!e
to act on some unpro!ed hypothesis, and sometimes such firm commitments may help to make
the belief come true. #onsider, for example, some belief that a man is trustworthy. The ob"ections
are that belief in the existence of God is clearly not of this case, and generally that to act
decisi!ely on some hypothesis does not reuire the agent to belie!e it as a known truth.