Who are agnostics at the core of them. Who is an agnostic
Who are agnostics, and what views on life do they hold? Not everyone will answer this question today, although the word “agnostic” itself is used by many.
The emergence of the term "agnostic"
The term "agnostic" originally appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and implied a system of views on religion that was different from the position of the established church. If in the church presentation the essence of things was determined, but not substantiated by evidence, then the agnostics were not going to accept the unproven base “on faith” and left the question of the origin of life and the existence of God open, assuming that someday mankind will be able to answer it.
The term was first used by British Darwinist Thomas Henry Huxley in 1876. Today, an agnostic is a person who denies all kinds of existing religions and creeds, but does not reject the very essence of the divine concept. Agnostics try to understand the essence of things based on the presence of objective evidence of the existence of a single creative principle of all surrounding life. They accept only evidence obtained through direct perception of the essence of things and their creation, not excluding the use of meditative techniques and practices, using descriptions of the experience of knowing the source of life by people who have achieved "enlightenment", and also, often, leave the question of whether there is a creator of all things open, without denying its relevance.
How are atheists different from agnostics?
Atheists are people who adhere to the concept of materialism. Materialism is a kind of faith, because the concept is as unproven as the existence of God in a religious interpretation. The proportion of atheists in the global space does not exceed 10 percent.
Agnostics are fundamentally different people. Their concepts go beyond mere belief. When the agnostic does not receive conclusive evidence, he leaves the question open. The number of agnostics in the world is steadily growing, gaining supporters from among those who have become disillusioned with the tenets of the official religion.
There are two main directions in agnosticism - theological and scientific. The first direction adheres to the belief that if mysticism is separated from religious interpretation, then the concept of cultural and moral values acceptable for human life will remain. These values are accepted by the current of theological agnosticism as the basis of existence and moral behavior. Thus, agnostic Christians left the mysticism inherent in Christianity, but left its morality as the basis of behavior.
Scientific agnosticism is based on the concept that any knowledge of the essence of the creation of the world is not accurate, as it is distorted by human consciousness. Agnostics of this trend are convinced that as long as consciousness exists as an element of cognition and thought, an objective picture cannot be perceived. The direction does not deny that the possibility of cognition may appear in the future.
Related articles:
All people either believe in God or do not believe in him. The former are believers, religious people who profess one religion or another. The second is atheists. They do not believe in the existence of divine powers. For them, everything that exists in the world can be scientifically proven. An intermediate position between believers and non-believers is occupied by agnostics. Who is this in simple words?
Content:
Who is an agnostic?
Agnostic (from ancient Greek - unknowable, unknown)is a person who believes that knowledge of objective reality through subjective experience is impossible. In his opinion, it is impossible to prove or disprove any facts using only personal experience. In relation to religion, the agnostic is convinced that the existence, as well as the non-existence of God, cannot be proved, since all ideas about him are based only on personal experience and knowledge.
From a philosophical point of view, an agnostic is one who claims that a person cannot know the world because of the limitations of his mind and knowledge.
History of Agnosticism
The emergence of agnosticism falls at the end of the 18th century. His ideas were developed in opposition to metaphysical philosophy, which actively explored the world with the help of subjective comprehension of metaphysical ideas, most of which do not have any objective manifestation or evidence.
The development of this theory was carried out by Herbert Spencer, Hamilton, George Berkeley, David Hume and others.
The primary origins of agnosticism can be traced back to ancient philosophy (philosophical views of Protagoras, sophists, ancient skeptics, etc.). But for the first time this term was introduced into scientific circulation by Professor Thomas Henry Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. Subsequently, agnosticism became one of the directions of philosophical science, which substantiated the impossibility of knowing the surrounding reality through subjective experience.
Important! Agnosticism is directly related to philosophical skepticism, which is the rationale for the idea that a person tirelessly cognizes the world around him, his knowledge of the surrounding reality is expanding, but still there will always be that part of unresolved questions that a person cannot get answers to, possessing all his knowledge and abilities.
What is the difference between an agnostic and an atheist?
- The mind of an agnostic is open, while that of an atheist is closed. The first can change points of view throughout his life, adhere to one fact today, and another tomorrow. It is open to everything new and unknown. The second - does not change his conviction that there is no higher power. He is a mature, formed personality who steadfastly adheres to his atheistic beliefs.
- Emotional sensitivity. Agnostics are humanists and altruists, atheists are egoists. The former are loyal to believers, the latter experience aggression towards them and do not accept their faith.
- Relation to the existence of the human soul. Both find it impossible to prove its existence. But agnostics feel its presence within themselves. Atheists completely renounce their own soul and do not believe in an afterlife.
- relation to tradition. An atheist does not recognize religious holidays that impose belief in something specific. An agnostic, although he does not believe in God, but if he loves to celebrate this or that event (Christmas, Easter), he will never refuse Christmas gifts or Easter eggs.
Important! Every person is born without faith in God (an atheist). This or that faith is instilled in us by society, or a person continues to remain an unbeliever. All people on the planet are born agnostics or atheists. The absence of faith as an innate phenomenon is a common feature between the agnostic and the atheist. And most importantly, both agnostics and atheists are thinking people, thinking about the origin of this or that phenomenon.
Attitude towards religions
Agnosticism does not mean a denial of the existence of a Higher power, it only asserts the impossibility of knowing whether God really exists or not, explains the unreality of obtaining reliable and accurate information, true knowledge on this fact.
When a person does not have enough evidence of the existence of God, he makes attempts to find them, puts forward hypotheses, conducts research, refuting or proving them, but ultimately concludes that it is still impossible to prove the existence or non-existence of the Higher powers. The same applies to various cognitive and philosophical reasoning.
Important! An agnostic does not profess "agnosticism" because such a religion simply does not exist. Agnosticism is a philosophical direction, doctrine, theory of knowledge.
Agnosticism leads to the fact that he himself is unknowable, he is just a means of replenishing and expanding knowledge, forming thoughts, gaining experience.
Notable agnostics include: I. Kant, B. Russell, F. Hayek, Ch. Darwin, A. Einstein, E. Gaidar and others.
Who can consider himself an agnostic?
Agnostics reduce the role of science to the knowledge of experience, and not the essence of things and phenomena.
An agnostic is one who always honestly says: “I don't know if there is a god or not. If you can prove its existence to me, I will believe in it.”. The positions of agnostics are held by well-known figures of science and art, who are afraid of harming their image with their categorical attitude towards religiosity, but at the same time consider religion to be false. Agnostics deny the existence of God, atheists do not believe that he exists. But if the latter openly express their point of view, the former, fearing criticism, veiledly explain their position by the impossibility of proving this or that phenomenon.
As long as there is a society, a system and religions, there will be people who do not want to adhere to the rules imposed by them. Atheism is also a kind of system that is opposite to the religious system. The agnostic is somewhere between these systems, somewhere near them, but at the same time nowhere. It is important to remember that all of us, believers and non-believers, need to be guided in life not only by reason, but also to listen to our hearts, because only with their unity and interaction is the birth of truth possible.
The words "atheist" and "agnostic" conjure up many different associations and values.
When the existence of God is called into question, the very subject matter of the debate is complex and often misunderstood.
No matter for what reasons or how they view the issue, agnostics and atheists are fundamentally different, but at the same time they share a number of similarities.
Many people who start calling themselves an agnostic simultaneously reject the term "atheist," even though it technically applies to them as well.
Let's understand differences between what it means to be an atheist and to be an agnostic, and let's leave behind any preconceived notions or misinterpretations.
What is an atheist?
An atheist is a person who does not believe in any gods. This is a very simple concept, but it is often widely misunderstood. For this reason, there are many other definitions.
Atheism - lack or lack of faith in the gods, or doubt about their existence.
The most precise definition might be: an atheist is anyone who disagrees with the proposition “at least one god exists”. This statement is not made by atheists. Being an atheist does not mean an active or even conscientious person. All that is required is not to "confirm" the judgment made by others.
Who is an agnostic?
An agnostic is anyone who does not claim to know whether there are any gods or not. This idea is also quite simple, but it can also be misunderstood as atheism.
One of the main problems is that atheism and agnosticism deal with the same question regarding the existence of gods. It should be taken into account that atheism implies that a person does not believe that God exists, while agnosticism means that man does not know if God exists. Faith and knowledge are related, but, nevertheless, are separate concepts.
There is a simple test to see if you are an agnostic or not. Do you know for sure that any gods exist? If so, then you are not an agnostic, but a theist or a believer. Are you sure that gods don't exist or can't even exist? If so, then you are not an agnostic, but an atheist.
If you could not answer “yes” to any of the previous questions, then you are a person who may or may not believe in one or more gods. However, since such people also do not claim to be sure of their knowledge, they are agnostics. Then the only question is whether they are theist agnostics or atheist agnostics.
Agnostic theists or agnostic atheists?
The atheist agnostic does not believe in any gods, while the theist agnostic believes in the existence of at least one god. However, neither of them can claim to have any knowledge to support this belief. Essentially, one more question remains open: why are they agnostic.
This fact seems contradictory and difficult, but in fact it is quite easy and logical. Whether agnostics believe or not, they can safely agree that they cannot know exactly what is true and what is false. This rule can be applied relatively to any other topic, because believing in something is not the same as exact knowledge or truth.
Once it becomes clear that atheism is just a lack of faith in any gods, it also becomes clear that agnosticism is not a “third way” between atheism and theism, as many used to think. Having faith in God and not having faith in God does not exhaust all possibilities.
Agnosticism is about not about faith in God, but about knowledge. The concept was originally coined to describe the position of a person who could not claim to know for sure whether any gods exist or not. This term was not intended to describe a person who has found an alternative between having or not having a particular faith.
And yet, many people have wrong impression, that agnosticism and atheism are mutually exclusive concepts. But why? There is no "I don't know" that logically excludes "I believe".
On the contrary, not only are knowledge and belief compatible, but they are often related, because not knowing something often becomes a reason not to believe.
In most cases, it is a good idea not to admit that something is true unless you have sufficient evidence to describe it as knowledge or truth. A good example of describing such a situation is the court, where the judge issues a verdict on the guilt of the accused on the basis of certain evidence.
It is worth noting that there are double standarts for atheists and agnostics. On the part of believers, a situation is often observed when they treat those people who claim that they do not believe in God (that is, atheists) worse, while agnostics are perceived more benevolently.
"Agnostic"- a person who is of the opinion that it is not possible to know reality through subjective experience. It is impossible to support or refute any ideas and views based on personal experience. In terms of religion, agnostics are people who believe that it is impossible to prove or, on the contrary, disprove the existence of God, because all judgments about him are based on personal experience and knowledge. In the philosophical sense, agnosticism asserts the impossibility of knowing the world due to the limitations of the human mind and knowledge.
Agnosticism in the theory of knowledge speaks of the impossibility of knowing the essence of things and that knowledge can be exclusively phenomenological in nature. There is Kant's theory, highlighting the idea that the main difficulty in understanding the world is the human mind due to its inconsistency. This means that, as the mind develops, it creates more and more controversial theories that cannot be proved and cannot be refuted, since in such a case both can be true and false at the same time. In addition, Kant believed that all things have a dual nature, which means that things cannot be known with certainty.
Agnosticism speaks of science only as a method of cognizing phenomena.
An example is an apple - it is made up of atoms. Everything living and non-living is made up of atoms - the smallest particles. The theory about the atomic structure of everything that exists is now absolutely obvious and generally accepted. But if someday someone proves that atoms consist of even smaller particles - quarks - then this nominal theory will become generally accepted and obvious. And so infinitely many times you can prove and disprove something. All this proves that knowledge of the world is impossible to the end and completely now and never seems possible.
In religion, agnosticism means the impossibility of knowing the existence of God. Agnosticism does not deny (!) the existence of higher forces, but only speaks of the unreality of obtaining accurate and reliable knowledge on this matter.
If a person is not sure of a sufficient amount of evidence about the existence of the Almighty, then he begins to look for evidence, build hypotheses, conduct research, but in the end all this will lead him to the conclusion that it is still impossible to obtain accurate and true knowledge about God. The same applies to judgments in the theory of knowledge and in the philosophical sphere. In addition, agnostics do not profess such a religion as "agnosticism" because such a religion simply does not exist. Agnosticism is not a religion (!), but a doctrine, a philosophical theory.
Knowledge is changeable, contestable, imperfect, which means that truth is denied, being is irrelevant.
Huma in his work says that knowledge is only experience, and it does not seem real to him to go beyond this experience. A significant contribution to agnosticism was made by the scholar Hamilton when he criticized Cousin's ideas about the knowledge of God. The scientist, relying on the teachings of Kant, said that all human knowledge, built only on experience, is imperfect, and therefore everything that is outside this experience is just as imperfect as it is unknowable. This means that with the help of only the knowledge available to science, we cannot firmly assert anything.
Agnosticism- this is part of philosophical skepticism, which also says that human knowledge is constantly growing, but unresolved questions will always remain beyond human knowledge and abilities.
The doctrine developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was then that the scientist Lossky formulated the dilemma that intuition is the main source of knowledge, because only direct knowledge is possible, or the source is only experience, in which not real phenomena are used, but only their copies. , and seeing only copies, we cannot assert the reliability of knowledge.
There is no connection between the essence and the phenomenon - the essence of the object is hidden deep inside it, and you need to reach it. Having an effect on the objects of the surrounding world, we find its essence, knowledge about it. If a thing exists, it means that it is open to knowledge. Turning to the topic of religious agnosticism, one can just say that God is not open to knowledge, which means that he can exist? And vice versa - if it exists - why is it not open to knowledge? Or is it still open?
Agnosticism is unknowable itself, it is a means of expanding knowledge, thoughts, experience.
Agnosticism is built on an exclusive critique of knowledge and the reality based on it.
Thus, we can conclude that an agnostic is a person who builds his conclusions and thoughts about the world, knowledge, environment based on his confidence in those things, the evidence of which he has.
The word "agnosticism" itself has long become familiar to modern mankind, but the correctness of its interpretation is often in doubt. Let's try to figure it out: who is an agnostic?
As a rule, the majority of those who answer this question equate people of such beliefs with incorrigible skeptics, and sometimes even atheists, which is fundamentally wrong. The assertion that agnostics are people who do not believe in God only testifies to the insufficiency of cultural development.
Philological context
Before we delve into the essence of this phenomenon, let's pay attention to a word that is very similar in spelling - "gnosticism". Both definitions go back etymologically to the Greek gnosis - knowledge. This can be called the key concept of both definitions.
Thus, the followers of Gnosticism, the spread of which began in the third or fourth century AD, claimed to have some kind of sacred knowledge received directly from God. Initially, this type of worldview was sharply opposed to religion in the usual sense of the word for us. For the Gnostic, the dominant, the only true proof of the existence of the Almighty was this very knowledge received from above in the form of some kind of insight. The inheritance of the church doctrine for such people seemed to be something lower and imperfect.
But there is also such a thing as agnostic. Who is it? Despite the common Greek root, the prefix of negation in itself indicates opposition. Agnostics did not at all deny the existence of God as such, as it can be perceived at first glance. On the contrary, there was no doubt about it. However, they did not see the possibility of knowing this Absolute.
A little more about the essence of the concept
In order to fully understand the meaning of this term, let us turn again to the etymology. Already at the birth of agnosticism, the morpheme of negation was added to the root borrowed from the Greek language. So from gnosis it turned out agnostos, which in translation means "inaccessible to knowledge."
What is hidden behind the word "agnostic"? Its definition was finally formulated relatively recently - in 1869, but this does not at all indicate the absence of agnosticism as a phenomenon and point of view until now. Even in the times of Antiquity, this position took place, and over time it was strengthened, developed and improved. In particular, in the philosophy of Protagoras, in ancient skepticism and among the sophists, the key ideas of this direction were clearly traced.
To a greater extent, views of this kind were inherent in idealist philosophers.
Origins of agnosticism
Initially, the divine component in this philosophical doctrine was practically absent. The first prerequisites for the emergence of agnosticism were doubts that arose regarding the absoluteness of knowledge, the variability of the world as such. “I only know that I know nothing” - fit perfectly into the concept and largely determined it.
In a word, the philosophical basis of this worldview was laid by the ancient agnostics. Representatives of that time, such as Socrates or the same Protagoras, not to mention sophists and skeptics, spoke only about the impossibility of a complete insight into the essence of things as such. Only later, in the course of time, did God appear in the paradigm of the phenomena they studied.
Philosophers and agnosticism
This concept has been expounded by a huge number of thinkers, but in its simplest and most general form it was presented in the works of Hume. This philosopher put experience at the head of knowledge, which is quite natural. Nevertheless, in this case, quite naturally, the question arose of how much a person's experience coincides with reality, the essence of things.
Further, agnostic philosophers developed this idea, introducing more and more new things into it. So, one of the classics of philosophy, Immanuel Kant, introduced the concept of "thing in itself", which cannot be fully known. He insisted on the difference between the imagined and the actual, dividing these concepts very strictly and fundamentally.
Nevertheless, despite the difference in points of view, the thinkers agreed on one thing: the embodiment of this very Absolute, as well as its full comprehension, is simply impossible under any conditions. Thus, a person, from the point of view of agnosticism, cannot claim that God is Allah, Jesus Christ or Buddha, since the very essence of God cannot be embodied and known.
Why you should not confuse concepts
As already mentioned, adherents of the impossibility of knowing the Absolute are often confused with atheists, which is fundamentally wrong. Agnostic - who is it? This is a person who believes in the existence of a higher power (in this case, God), but claims that it cannot be known or its existence scientifically proven.
The atheist, on the other hand, claims that God, like any other higher power, simply does not exist. He does not require proof, does not strive for knowledge - he only denies this point of view. Thus, there is a huge difference between an agnostic and an atheist, which should not be forgotten.
In addition, the philosophy of agnosticism is much broader than religion, since it is based on the concept of knowledge as such and the way of knowing the whole world as a whole.
Summarizing
So, agnostic. Who is it? This is a person who is able to doubt the power of his mind, perceiving the world is much more complex than it might seem at first glance. This is a thinker striving for knowledge of the Truth and realizing the impossibility of its knowledge. These are Kant, Hegel and David Hume. This is a person who believes in God, but is not attached to religion.
