Agnosticism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Thomas Henry Huxley==== [[File:ThomasHenryHuxley.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Thomas Henry Huxley]] in the 1860s. He was the first to decisively coin the term ''agnosticism''.]] Agnostic views are as old as [[philosophical skepticism]], but the terms agnostic and agnosticism were created by [[Thomas Henry Huxley|Huxley]] (1825–1895) to sum up his thoughts on contemporary developments of metaphysics about the "unconditioned" ([[Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet|William Hamilton]]) and the "unknowable" ([[Herbert Spencer]]). Though Huxley began to use the term ''agnostic'' in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some time before that date. In a letter of September 23, 1860, to [[Charles Kingsley]], Huxley discussed his views extensively:<ref name="Huxley1997">{{cite book|author=Thomas Henry Huxley|author-link=Thomas Henry Huxley|title=The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley|url=https://archive.org/details/majorproseofthom00huxl|url-access=registration|year=1997|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-1864-6|pages=[https://archive.org/details/majorproseofthom00huxl/page/357 357]–}} </ref><ref name="Huxley2012"> {{cite book|author=Leonard Huxley|title=Thomas Henry Huxley A Character Sketch|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YKNj1u0R4JcC&pg=PT41|date=February 7, 2012|publisher=tredition|isbn=978-3-8472-0297-4|pages=41–}}</ref> {{blockquote|I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no ''a priori'' objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about ''a priori'' difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter ... It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions ... That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.}} And again, to the same correspondent, May 6, 1863:<ref name="HuxleyHuxley2011">{{cite book|author1=Leonard Huxley|author2=Thomas Henry Huxley|title=Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-azeZXAf6MMC&pg=PA347|date=December 22, 2011|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-108-04045-7|pages=347–}}</ref> {{blockquote|I have never had the least sympathy with the ''a priori'' reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father [who] loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I—who am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for our deeds—have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them.}} Of the origin of the name agnostic to describe this attitude, Huxley gave the following account:<ref>{{cite book| title=Collected Essays, Vol. V: Science and Christian Tradition| first=Thomas| last=Huxley| isbn= 1-85506-922-9| publisher=Macmillan and Co 1893| pages=237–239}}</ref> {{blockquote|When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis"{{mdash}}had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic". It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. ... To my great satisfaction the term took.}} In 1889, Huxley wrote:{{blockquote|Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demonstrable that we have no real knowledge of the authorship, or of the date of composition of the Gospels, as they have come down to us, and that nothing better than more or less probable guesses can be arrived at on that subject.<ref>{{cite book|last=Huxley|first=Thomas Henry|author-link=Thomas Henry Huxley|title=Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_b7aAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA364|year=1892|publisher=Macmillan|page=364|chapter=Agnosticism And Christianity|quote=Agnosticism And Christianity: Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demonstrable that we have no real knowledge of the authorship, or of the date of composition of the Gospels, as they have come down to us, and that nothing better than more or less probable guesses can be arrived at on that subject.}}</ref>}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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