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