Why Agnostic?

[Purple Rabbit]

Imo there is a difference between fundamental agnosticism (we not only do not know now, but we will never know in the furure) and technical agnosticism. Fundamental agnosticism is absolute in nature. Isn't it strange to claim the absolute with a word that expresses doubt?

I don't quite understand your last question. How does agnosticism use a word of "doubt" to express a absolute concept? Unless you are combining definitions perhaps?

You seem to give priority to original defintion (Huxley) above common use of the word. I see no specific reason for that. The waterfall of homonyms after Huxley is not an indication of clarity of his definition.

I think priority should always fall on the original meaning unless a good reason can be made to change it. In the case of agnosticism, I don't see what that reason could be. It is a good word, based off "gnosticism" (which stated that certain spiritual truths are known), and added the "a" as a negating letter, leaving you with "certain spiritual truths are not known". Huxley further explained that agnosticism should also be a position that certain truths can never be known, due to the nature of these truths (i.e. because non-omniscient people cannot test the omniscience of so called "gods"). Perhaps it is just a lifetime of people getting misconceptions and sharing them, who knows? I suspect it was people taking the definitive "Do you know if God exists?" question of agnosticism and replacing it with "Do you know if you believe?" which tends to be the most popular misdefinition of the word.

The problem with the term ‘agnosticism’ which imo has been the primary factor for much confusion about Huxley’s definition through the years is that his definition is not clear about the distinction between effective lack of knowledge and fundamental unknowability:

1) Effective lack of knowledge regarding statement X ~ statement X is not proven
2) Fundamental unknowability regarding statement X ~ statement X is unprovable

Please note that (2) is a much stronger claim than (1). Claim (2) itself is absolute, for it asserts in absolute terms that absolute knowledge of reality is impossible. It is easy to see that this is self-contradictory. If the nature of reality cannot be known in any absolute sense, then also it cannot be known absolutely that the nature of reality is fundamentally unknowable. The implications of this distinction on clear use of Huxley’s definition are great.

So the first question is what Huxley really meant. Did he mean fundamental unknowability or just effective lack of knowledge. His definitions are notoriously vague. Huxley’s most clear definition of agnosticism often is quoted as follows: “… 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.” As you can see, more than anything it is a moral appeal for building claims on evidence. This is one of the reasons that others have stated that agnosticism is not on the same dimension made up of claims about the existence of god (ranging from theism to atheism) at all but constitutes a separate dimension concerning provability. There’s a moral dimension in it too and crucial for him is that knowledge (‘gnosis’) entails that evidence is provided to logically justify the claim. This exposes another weakness in his definition: he makes knowledge dependent on being able to proof it to others. His claim is provability rather than knowability. But someone that is claiming some stance on the existence of god(s) does not care about provability per se. Even the one that does not know whether god exists or not could that on quite other arguments than provability. Claiming does not necessarily imply that proving plays any role in it. Also it shows that when we take this ‘definition’ of Huxley as his most accurate definition, the word ‘agnostic’ is interchangeable with ‘logically provable’.

The emphasis on provability also is apparent in another quote of Huxley:
“Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: 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. 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.”

You seem to assert that it is fundamental unknowability or unprovability what he claimed. But he himself is not clear about it and has shown different takes on it through the years. Later he accomodated his definition 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.” So this would seem to mean that he is not claiming fundamental unknowability/unprovability at all.
All this shows that Huxley’s definition of agnosticism is not clear at all, that it is laden with his own personal moral, that its interpretation as funadamental unknowability is self contradictory, that there is no need to invent a new word for provability and last but not least that it unneccessarily mixes provability with what I would call claimability (if that's a word at all). Use of the word agnosticism imo, to clarify stances taken on the existence of god(s), therefore is ill advised.

Do we need classification of stances on the existence of god(s)? Although I acknowledge that it can be insightfull to investigate the spectrum of stances that can be taken or as an introduction to these different takes, I see no reason for the urge to label each others claims. After years of debating the subject I feel no longer the need to classify myself or others in these categories. The reason for this is that these categories only suggest accuracy but never really satisfyingly supply it. Also this kind of categorizing is trying to answer a question about all god concepts on a meta level meanwhile moving away from the specifics of a god concept itself. In my experience however there's hardly anything more volatile than god concepts. This always ends in discussions on the semantics of the ranking system while the specifics of the god concept, where the debating fun is, are left out. Furthermore they do not address the claim that I find at least as interesting, the claim of moral supremacy.

To identify claims on the existence of god I only use a few simple questions as a guideline: What god concept are we evaluating? Is any evidence for the claims presented? Is the claim internally consistent? What are the moral consequences of the claim?

@ leo-rcc: you’re not the first to invent the fallacy of argumentum ad internettiam (“something is true if there is a website that says so”), but I reckon this was your tongue in cheek mode.