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diff --git a/website/src/content/blog/2026-03-04.md b/website/src/content/blog/2026-03-04.md deleted file mode 100644 index 7e8a532..0000000 --- a/website/src/content/blog/2026-03-04.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,29 +0,0 @@ ---- -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? |