Subject:
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Re: Santorum Fails In His Effort To Pervert The Constitution
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:08:05 GMT
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Viewed:
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2418 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
> Not the way I understand what an agnostic is. An agnostic holds that the
> ultimate truth about God existing or not existing is not knowable. That's
> not undecided, though many undecided people misuse the term "agnostic" to
> describe themselves. An agnostic is holding a firm position, undecided
> people aren't (contrast 1) You can't prove to me that God does or does not
> exists, with 2) Maybe God exists, maybe he doesn't, Idunno). Describing an
> agnostic as "undecided" is like calling a scientist undecided about the
> theory of relativity because he can change his conviction based on later
> evidence.
Huh! I guess I've never really investigated the meaning; rather I've just gone
by how people use it (which, for philosophic terms, I'm more inclined to doing
anyway, and reject outright whatever a dictionary says if it tells me
differently from how it's used commonly-- IE I won't rely on a dictionary's
definiton of "God" or "Reality") So, sadly, I've reverted to the sort who looks
up words in dictionaries: According to m-w.com:
> : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown
> and prob. unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in
> either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
Dictionary.com:
> n.
> 1 a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
> b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess
> true atheism.
> 2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
>
> adj.
> 1. Relating to or being an agnostic.
> 2. Doubtful or noncommittal: “Though I am agnostic on what terms to use, I
> have no doubt that human infants come with an enormous ‘acquisitiveness’
> for discovering patterns” (William H. Calvin).
>
> Word History: An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but
> holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. The term
> agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas
> H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact
> knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning “without, not,”
> as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word
> gnsis, “knowledge,” which was used by early Christian writers to
> mean “higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things” hence, Gnostic
> referred to those with such knowledge. In coining the term agnostic, Huxley
> was considering as “Gnostics” a group of his fellow intellectuals“ists,” as
> he called them who had eagerly embraced various doctrines or theories that
> explained the world to their satisfaction. Because he was a “man without a
> rag of a label to cover himself with,” Huxley coined the term agnostic for
> himself, its first published use being in 1870.
Interesting. I'm actually rather suprised to see (given the above history) that
the dictionary.com version actually lists as a seperate meaning "doubtful or
noncomittal", which appears to not even need any religious or philosophic
context (IE being "agnostic" about which terms to use? Meaning [by strict
definition] that it is decidedly impossible to know which words to use?
Certainly appears to stray from the inital definition).
Ah well, something new every day, I suppose...
DaveE
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