|
'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good.' Socrates
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 – 1895) came up with the word ‘agnostic’ while searching for a term to describe his own beliefs. He did not consider himself “an atheist, a theist, a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; [nor] a Christian…” and while he had much in common with freethinkers, he wanted a term to describe himself more accurately. His difference with the people who gave themselves the above labels was that he did not feel certain of his knowledge- or ‘gnosis’- that he “had successfully solved the problem of existence.”
The essential problem was that Huxley believed the problem was unsolvable. And thus far, despite the existence of famous thinkers like Emmanuel Kant and David Hume who philosophically agreed with him on the matter, there wasn’t a name for someone who believed you could never know the source of, nor reason for existence.
Huxley got the term “gnostic” from the early Christian Gnostics, whom he said, “professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant”, and created the word ‘agnostic’, with the prefix giving the new word the opposite meaning of the core word, which means, "knowing". This is close to the meaning that most modern day people associate with the word. It is used to mean a person who is not certain whether God exists or gods exist. It is subtly different from the original meaning in that the term started out to mean that knowledge of the cause and origin of existence is not only an uncertainty, but an impossibility, whether you’re considering that the origin may be God, science, or something else entirely.
Throughout his life, during which the word ‘agnostic’ caught on and became commonly used, Huxley tweaked his term, and adjusted its meaning. He ultimately came to describe agnosticism as a method of thinking, in the way science is a means of thinking, not a belief in and of itself. His ideal was that everyone should be able to give a reason for his faith, or simply not claim it as his own. He said it this way: “In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable”.
There was a moral edge to Huxley’s agnosticism. “That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.” There was an implied call for an honest intellectual decision in terms of belief. To put it into brief, modern words, he might have said, “Don’t claim it if you cannot explain it”.
Huxley understood and accepted that the new term would have different meanings depending on the understanding and intellect of the individual. Furthermore, he knew that the meaning for each individual would change as time goes on, to incorporate new findings in understanding or in science. He said, “That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow.”
Huxley defined agnositicism as follows, and this is perhaps, the truest definition of the term today: “… it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.” It is not merely a matter of whether or not one knows if God exists, but it is a matter of whether one can objectively define his belief, whether in God or in anything else.
Huxley was a gifted speaker, and was known, in the course of his many debates, to quietly state that he knew nothing about the supernatural about which his opponents claimed firm belief, then, somewhat louder, to add, “And neither do you.”
|
| |
