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authorJoe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>2026-03-24 22:07:05 +0000
committerJoe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>2026-03-24 22:07:05 +0000
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moves blog posts to new position to be consistent with gemlog
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----
-title: What is an agnostic?
-description: >-
-pubDate: 2026-03-04
----
-
-I learned today that the first agnostic was 'Darwin's Bulldog', Thomas Henry
-Huxley. He attended the Metaphysical Society, an extremely broad selection of
-England's foremost thinkers who gathered in London nine times a year throughout
-the 1870s to discuss the ultimate questions. He tried all the usual
-appellations: atheist, theist, pantheist, materialist, idealist, Christian. He
-found all of them wanting. All the various '-ists', he felt, 'were quite sure
-they had attained a certain "gnosis,"-had, more or less successfully, solved the
-problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong
-conviction that the problem was insolube.' Thus, negating the term 'gnostic', he
-coined 'agnostic'.
-
-Thus for Huxley, as with all the first agnostics, the term did not intend the
-metaphysical neutrality it's often taken to mean today. For Huxley, it's a
-positive epistemological assertion: sure, I don't know, but neither do you: the
-matter is in principle unknowable. 'Agnostic' is not a way for Huxley to
-diplomatically sidestep metaphysical debates without having to take a side, it's
-a confrontational view which contradicts the theist, the atheist, and all the
-rest.
-
-I wonder what people in my life think of this, who have described themselves as
-'agnostic'. Did they mean what Huxley meant, or did they mean something more
-irenic? Does Huxley's approach challenge them? Is neutrality really an adequate
-stance?