Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2003 09:26:53 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Produced by PhpWiki 1.3.2-jeffs-hacks)
Content-Type: application/x-phpwiki;
  pagename=agnosticism;
  flags="";
  author=VectorHermit;
  version=7;
  lastmodified=1062250013;
  author_id=VectorHermit;
  markup=2;
  hits=16272;
  charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

[VirianLexicon]:[agnosticism]

!!!Agnosticism
----
The epistemological stance that knowledge is only as certain as the available evidence. It is [skepticism], especially as pertaining to questions of [religion]. Agnosticism is consistent with [atheism].

A - without
Gnosis - intuitive knowledge of spiritual truths (as claimed by the gnostics).

Here is the unarguable "horse's mouth" (Huxley coined the word) __Quote:__"...it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.  This is what Agnosticism asserts;  and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism.  That which Agnostics deny, and repudiate as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to [believe|belief], without logically satisfactory evidence." ("Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays", Thomas Henry Huxley 1889, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992, p. 193.)

So an agnostic, asserts that the natures or attributes of the gods are unknowable except through the intuition. This of course, has as the corollary, as Huxley (as a [Deist|deist]) most certainly meant, the proposition that [gods|OnGod] exist in some shape, form and quantity, albeit "necessarily" objectively unknown (and sometimes meant as an assertion that these attributes are unknowable) to the agnostic (and sometimes meaning to everyone).
