Imagine you’re at a family gathering when you’re cornered into a strained conversation on the existence of God between your fundamentalist uncle and your atheist cousin. After wondering what possessed you to come, you take a deep breath. Maybe, you suggest, all faith exists on a spectrum of belief and doubt. We each inhabit different places on that continuum at different points in our life journey — and you’re not really sure where you sit at the moment.
Later, after congratulating yourself on your diplomacy, you thank your inner agnostic.
When it comes to the God question, agnostics reject simple yes-or-no answers. Embracing paradox and uncertainty, they refuse the black-and-white thinking that often dominates faith discussions.
But what exactly is agnosticism? Who came up with the term? Can you be both agnostic and a believer, or agnostic and atheist? What challenges come with the label?
What is agnosticism? According to Nathan Alexander, a part-time professor of history at the University of Ottawa and author of Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race and Civilization, 1850-1914, “What most people mean when they say they’re agnostic is that not they’re not sure whether God exists or not.” That’s a rough-and-ready definition, and it’s not far off the mark considering the roots of the term.
Agnosticism hails from the Greek word “gnosis,” meaning knowledge. The handy “a” prefix signals that to be agnostic about something is to think it’s ultimately unknowable — whether that’s the nature of consciousness, your cat’s capacity for love or the existence of deities.
The degree to which you embrace the unknown might just determine where you land on the agnostic spectrum. At one end are hard agnostics, those Alexander says believe it’s “forever unknowable whether God exists,” no matter how advanced our scientific tools or theological explorations become. On the flip side are soft agnostics, who leave the door open to the possibility that we might discover answers in the future.
“The soft agnostic position is that now we don’t know if God exists, but at some point in the future…we might figure it out,” Alexander says. Unlike hard agnostics’ definitive stance that a higher power is beyond our grasp, soft agnostics’ cautious “maybe” is flexible, ready to entertain new evidence or perspectives as they arise.
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Who came up with the term “agnostic”? Agnosticism is actually the birth child of atheism, says Alexander. The term was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, a prominent British scientist and ardent supporter of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In the late 1860s, as Darwin’s ideas shook the scientific and religious communities, Huxley was busy crafting the new concept.
“In 1869, there was a meeting of the Metaphysical Society, which was a kind of discussion group where prominent Victorians would go and talk about big issues,” Alexander says, adding that both Christians and non-Christians attended. Over the course of that meeting, Huxley would distance himself from those who felt they possessed “gnosis” — that they had “solved the problem of existence” as Huxley put it.
Huxley’s agnosticism wasn’t about sitting on the fence; it was a bold declaration of the limits of human knowledge. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, while Huxley initially used the term as a catchall to signal restraints to what we humans can reasonably know, it was the term’s application to the theistic/atheistic debate that really stuck.
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Can you be both a believer and agnostic? Agnostics, like the late journalist Lesley Hazelton, author of Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, insist that one can be both/and. Hazelton was both Jewish and agnostic. Others, like the late mainline-Protestant preacher and teacher Leslie D. Weatherhead, claim to be both Christian and agnostic. While attracted to the figure of Christ, Weatherhead maintained in his 1965 manifesto, The Christian Agnostic, that doubt is a normal part of any faith journey. For him, the moral teachings of Jesus held sway — but that didn’t preclude questioning other mainstays of traditional Christian theology, like the existence of an afterlife.
Can you be both an atheist and agnostic? Oddly enough, agnosticism is a label that resonates with religious and non-religious alike. “Atheist agnostics” tend to steer clear of religious ties and lean toward disbelief in deities. But they still leave room for uncertainty.
What are the problems with the term “agnostic”? The term “agnostic” carries intriguing possibilities for lots of people on the faith spectrum but has faced issues from the start, says Alexander. “Agnostics in the 1800s were trying to run away from the term ‘atheist,’ which had really negative connotations,” he says.
According to Alexander, atheism in the Victorian era was often linked to the lower classes. By contrast, agnosticism was embraced by upwardly mobile scientists and intellectuals who wanted to signal their departure from religion without jeopardizing their social standing. “They were trying to show that they weren’t religious or Christian, but they weren’t wanting to associate themselves with atheists either,” he says.
In fact, like their openly atheist counterparts, declared agnostics were essentially making the case for the ultimate unknowability of the existence of God.
Even today, the agnostic label invites criticism from both believers and atheists, each of whom have their own reasons for questioning the legitimacy or sincerity of the position. It still carries associations of indecision or fence-sitting — a frustrating situation for those who view their stance as principled and thoughtful. As the world shifts toward secularism, more and more people are calling themselves agnostic — a broader trend of questioning and redefining belief that is especially prevalent among younger generations.
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Julie McGonegal is a writer in Elora, Ont.
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