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{{Cquote| Though there are a couple of references in The Oxford English Dictionary to earlier occurrences of the word ‘agnostic’, it seems (perhaps independently) to have been introduced by T. H. Huxley at a party in London to found the Metaphysical Society, which flourished for over a decade and to which belonged notable thinkers and leaders of opinion. Huxley thought that as many of these people liked to describe themselves as adherents of various ‘isms’ he would invent one for himself. He took it from a description in Acts 17:23 of an altar inscribed ‘to an unknown God’. Huxley thought that we would never be able to know about the ultimate origin and causes of the universe. Thus he seems to have been more like a [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] believer in unknowable noumena than like a Vienna Circle proponent of the view that talk of God is not even meaningful. Perhaps such a logical [[Positivism|positivist]] should be classified as neither a theist nor an atheist, but her view would be just as objectionable to a theist. ‘Agnostic’ is more contextual than is ‘atheist’, as it can be used in a non-theological way, as when a cosmologist might say that she is agnostic about [[string theory]], neither believing nor disbelieving it. In this article I confine myself to the use of ‘agnostic’ in a theological context.

{{Cquote| Though there are a couple of references in The Oxford English Dictionary to earlier occurrences of the word ‘agnostic’, it seems (perhaps independently) to have been introduced by T. H. Huxley at a party in London to found the Metaphysical Society, which flourished for over a decade and to which belonged notable thinkers and leaders of opinion. Huxley thought that as many of these people liked to describe themselves as adherents of various ‘isms’ he would invent one for himself. He took it from a description in Acts 17:23 of an altar inscribed ‘to an unknown God’. Huxley thought that we would never be able to know about the ultimate origin and causes of the universe. Thus he seems to have been more like a [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] believer in unknowable noumena than like a Vienna Circle proponent of the view that talk of God is not even meaningful. Perhaps such a logical [[Positivism|positivist]] should be classified as neither a theist nor an atheist, but her view would be just as objectionable to a theist. ‘Agnostic’ is more contextual than is ‘atheist’, as it can be used in a non-theological way, as when a cosmologist might say that she is agnostic about [[string theory]], neither believing nor disbelieving it. In this article I confine myself to the use of ‘agnostic’ in a theological context.

Huxley's agnosticism seems nevertheless to go with an extreme [[empiricism]], nearer to Mill's methods of induction than to recent discussions of the hypothetico-deductive and partly holistic aspect of testing of theories.<ref>[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/ Atheism and Agnosticism], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</ref>}}

Huxley's agnosticism seems nevertheless to go with an extreme [[empiricism]], nearer to [[John Stuart Mill|Mill]]'s methods of induction than to recent discussions of the hypothetico-deductive and partly holistic aspect of testing of theories.<ref>[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/ Atheism and Agnosticism], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</ref>}}

See also:  

See also: