[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Gennady Ra]

At 02:57 PM 12/1/04 +1030, you Emlyn wrote:

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 17:55:27 -0800 (PST), Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I am an agnostic because I don't know which sort of universe I live in,  
>>yet, but I lean to the Deist view because the odds tell me to. 

>Sometimes I call myself an agnostic, in the spirit of Huxley, who
>meant not that he wasn't sure, but that one could not possibly know a
>god that revealed itself only via mysticism because mysticism is bunk.
>It comes from the word gnosis, which means roughly "inner knowledge",
>or mystically received knowledge. The original meaning of agnostic is
>that it is not possible to know of god. The meaning of the word these
>days has changed to mean you are a fence sitter, but that's a
>corruption of the word (as misunderstood by the mentally
>underequipped, imo).

>The Agnosticism of Sir Thomas Huxley is what is usually nowadays meant
>by intelligent Atheists (as opposed to those who have come to atheism
>as a reaction against their religious upbringing, and who might as
>well have become satanists, because their atheism is a rebellious
>faith in the opposite of what they think they are supposed to
>believe).

>So when I call myself an Atheist, as I usually do, it is partly in the
>spirit of Huxley's agnosticism. Firstly, I have no belief in god.
[snip]

OED again:

agnostic n. and a. 
[f. Gr. unknowing, unknown, unknowable (f. not + know) + -ic. Cf. gnostic; 
in Gr. the termination - ... never coexists with the privative ...] 
A. n. One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind 
material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and 
especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we 
know nothing. 
[Suggested by Prof. Huxley at a party held previous to the formation of the 
now defunct Metaphysical Society, at Mr. James Knowles’s house on Clapham 
Common, one evening in 1869, in my hearing. He took it from St. Paul’s 
mention of the altar to ‘the Unknown God.’ R. H. Hutton in letter 13 Mar. 
1881.] 
1870 Spect. 29 Jan. 135 In theory he [Prof. Huxley] is a great and even 
severe Agnostic, who goes about exhorting all men to know how little they 
know. 
1874 Mivart Ess. Relig. etc. 205 Our modern Sophists­the Agnostics,­those 
who deny we have any knowledge, save of phenomena. 
1876 Spect. 11 June, Nicknames are given by opponents, but Agnostic was the 
name demanded by Professor Huxley for those who disclaimed atheism, and 
believed with him in an ‘unknown and unknowable’ God; or in other words that 
the ultimate origin of all things must be some cause unknown and unknowable. 
1880 Bp. Fraser in Manch. Guardn. 25 Nov., The Agnostic neither denied nor 
affirmed God. He simply put Him on one side. 
B. adj. Of or pertaining to agnostics or their theory. 
1873 Q. Rev. CXXXV. 192 The pseudo-scientific teachers of what has..been 
termed..the Agnostic Philosophy. 
1876 Tulloch Agnosticism in Weekly Scotsm. 18 Nov., The same agnostic 
principle which prevailed in our schools of philosophy had extended itself 
to religion and theology. Beyond what man can know by his senses or feel by 
his higher affections, nothing, as was alleged, could be truly known. 
1880 G. C. M. Birdwood Ind. Arts I. 4 The agnostic teaching of the Sankhya 
school is the common basis of all systems of Indian philosophy. 
1882 Froude Carlyle II. 216 The agnostic doctrines, he (Carlyle) once said 
to me, were to appearance like the finest flour, from which you might expect 
the most excellent bread; but when you came to feed on it, you found it was 
powdered glass, and you had been eating the deadliest poison. 

agnosticism 
[f. agnostic + -ism.] 
The doctrine or tenets of Agnostics. 
1870 Spect. 29 Jan. 135 The lecture was..perhaps not quite so full as it 
should have been of his Agnosticism. 
1871 R. H. Hutton Ess. I. 27 They themselves vehemently dispute the term 
[atheism] and usually prefer to describe their state of mind as a sort of 
know-nothingism or Agnosticism, or belief in an unknown and unknowable God. 
1877 E. Conder Basis of Faith i. 25 But there is nothing per se irrational 
in contending that the evidences of Theism are inconclusive, that its 
doctrines are unintelligible, or that it fails to account for the facts of 
the universe, or is irreconcilable with them. To express this kind of 
polemic against religious faith the term ‘agnosticism’ has been adopted. 
1879 Huxley Hume i. 60 Called agnosticism, from its profession of an 
incapacity to discover the indispensable conditions of either positive or 
negative knowledge. 
1880 Sat. Rev. 26 June 819/2 In nine cases out of ten Agnosticism is but old 
atheism ‘writ large.’ 
=============  

St. Paul’s 
mention of the altar to ‘the Unknown God’:

Ac. 17.22-23
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mar's hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I 
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotion, I found an altar with the 
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him 
declare I unto you.
===== 

Best!

Gennady
Simferopol Crimea Ukraine