Agnosticism

[Angrboda]

I realize that agnosticism predates Huxley, but he is the author who most gave agnosticism its present form. Huxley and those who agreed with him posited not that we couldn't be confident that God existed, but that we couldn't have knowledge of the specifics of God. Thus the Huxleyan agnostics criticized the various forms of worship such as confession and the eucharist as assuming to know too much of the specifics of what God is and what He wants. Huxley et all were reacting, in large measure, to the claim's of knowledge and ownership of the rights of faith by the religious institutions. In a way, they were a companion movement to deism in that they still postulated a god, just not that the specifics of the god could be known. The meaning of the world evolved to mean, generally, anyone who claims that it is impossible to know the specifics of some object of attention, with God being the prototypical case. In recent times, the word has evolved again to mean that it is impossible to have certain, infallible knowledge of the specifics of the object of inquiry.

This is where it meets atheism, and has been incorporated into the culture. Its meaning in the sense of it being impossible to have any knowledge of God, or of having knowledge of the specifics of God, has been replaced by the meaning that an agnostic believes it impossible to have positive, certain knowledge of the specifics of God.

This is all well and good except for two points. First, as noted, some are able to assign probabilities to the question, and most atheist agnostics dismiss the idea of God as improbable. When you assign probabilities to any question, you are claiming knowledge, even if that knowledge is only partial and uncertain. If you have no knowledge of a binary question, the principle of insufficient reason states that you assign a 50/50 probability to the outcome; assigning other probabilities implies knowledge, no matter how fallible.

Second, most who do not already believe in a god or a divine revelation already accept that anything they believe they know may turn out to be false or wrong; believing one's knowledge fallible and capable of revision is almost a required part of not believing in revealed sources of knowledge. The point that all knowledge is provisional seems a presupposition shared, not just among agnostics, but among all who deny sources of absolute knowledge such as gods, revelations, prophecy, or absolute codes. To add the word agnosticism to your claim to not believe in a god seems to be protesting too much by half, as it isn't only agnostic atheists who posit that their knowledge is only provisional, but essentially everybody. It's almost like saying "I'm a human atheist, by which I mean I'm distinctly human, unlike those other human atheists."

Ultimately, I think this glomming on to the label agnostic by atheists represents a couple of things. First, it's an obvious evolution of the word from related meanings. But secondly, it is an anti-theist statement responding to theists framing the question in terms of certain knowledge, and so the atheist responds by framing the answer, agnosticism, in terms of certain knowledge. To my mind, this is a misunderstanding of the meaning of 'knowledge' and the sources of knowledge, admittedly caused by the theist's usage of the term. To my mind, if you don't believe in revealed or absolute knowledge, you already accept, by implication, that your claims to knowledge are provisional. In that case, I think the label is redundant in that it adds a qualifier which doesn't need to be added, because it's already presumed. It also allows our understanding of just what "knowledge" is and what the word means to be framed by this question of certainty and 'proof', outdated notions that are at home in theist epistemology, but should be abandoned by thinking non-theists. Knowledge isn't about possessing certain, infallible truth, it's about reasonably justified beliefs, with doubt, skepticism, and the acknowledgement of fallibility.