Recovery aa - Agnosticism is not quite Atheism but close

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Agnosticism is not quite Atheism but close

GaryE

2006-02-23, 11:10 am

Robert G. Ingersoll is perhaps the most famous American Agnostic of
the 19th century. He commented on the problem of theodicy -- the
presence of evil in a universe that many people believe was created
and is run by God:

"There is no subject -- and can be none -- concerning which any human
being is under any obligation to believe without evidence...The man
who, without prejudice, reads and understands the Old and New
Testaments will cease to be an orthodox Christian. The intelligent man
who investigates the religion of any country without fear and without
prejudice will not and cannot be a believer....He who cannot harmonize
the cruelties of the Bible with the goodness of Jehovah, cannot
harmonize the cruelties of Nature with the goodness and wisdom of a
supposed Deity. He will find it impossible to account for pestilence
and famine, for earthquake and storm, for slavery, for the triumph of
the strong over the weak, for the countless victories of injustice. He
will find it impossible to account for martyrs -- for the burning of
the good, the noble, the loving, by the ignorant, the malicious, and
the infamous. " 3
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H. Huxley, a well known English religious skeptic, invented the term
Agnostic in the 1840's. He combined "a" which implies negative, with
"gnostic" which is a Greek word meaning knowledge.

In 1899, he wrote:

"...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." 7

He also wrote:

"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; a 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...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..." 2

Tommy

2006-02-23, 11:10 am

GaryE wrote:
>====
> H. Huxley, a well known English religious skeptic, invented the term
> Agnostic in the 1840's. He combined "a" which implies negative, with
> "gnostic" which is a Greek word meaning knowledge.
>
> In 1899, he wrote:

I suppose it beats whinging about a book written 2000 years ago.

So tell me Giddyap, besides Garrulosity and anti-christian rants what else
do you do ?

There has to be a song in here somewhere =
Theres a place called Lonely Street :-)
TOmmy