It becomes much less complicated when u throw the whole "God" argument away and realize no one actually knows a thing.
And how do you know that?
If you never second guess yourself on your beliefs, good for you. But we both know you do. Agnostics don't have to. And that's not fear, it's honesty.
The interesting thing about agnostic, as opposed to labels/categories like deist, theist, atheist, christian, etc., is that we aren't dealing with a word which developed organically in some culture. Atheism, for example, did not originally mean either a disbelief in religious/spiritual notions or a disbelief in god. It meant something more akin to being blasphemous or sacrilegious, and over time (and incorporation into other languages) took on new meanings.
With agnostic, not only do we know the origin of the word, we know exactly how it came to be and what it meant and why. Thomas Huxley, in 1869, coined the term "agnostic" at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society. He was pressured to label his position, and as he puts it "I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant." (Science and Christian Tradition: Essays by Thomas Huxley).
Of course, the label did not stay unique to Huxley but (as words are wont to do) went off and made a name for itself. A little more than a decade later the term was already one of controversy.
But that (and other historical notes) are less important than characterizing agnosticism not having to "second guess" yourself. Whatever controversies arose after Huxley (who responded to these uses), arose from discussions, questioning, and philosophical inquiry. Although it didn't take long for the term to be used as one characterizing a lack of committment or position in a generic sense and concerning trivial issues, it wasn't widely used that way relative to uses closer to that of Huxley's for some time.
Such uses include:
1) A person who denies that nothing can (even in principle) be known of the immaterial, including God ("Our modern Sophists—the Agnostics,—those who deny we have any knowledge, save of phenomena." Mivart, 1874; "All these considerations, and the great controversies which suggest them, are in the highest degree cultivating, and will be admitted to be so even by those Agnostics who think them profitless of any practical result." May edition of Spectator, 1869)
2) The belief that the immaterial (including God) is uknowable ("The same agnostic principle which prevailed in our schools of philosophy had extended itself to religion and theology. Beyond what man can know by his senses or feel by his higher affections, nothing, as was alleged, could be truly known" Agnosticism in Weekly Scotsman; 1876)
3) Someone who is both skeptical in general and not committed to particular views, whether religious, political, or anything ideological ("Many worthy young persons who have been brought up on the sincere milk of agnostic politics" Syracuse Standard 1884; in reference to medical treatments for tuberculosis, "the only possible attitude with regard to them is at best an agnostic one" Lancet, 1891)
There is nothing intrinsic in agnosticism that permits a life unexamined: C.S Lewis, Bertrand Russell, Anthony Flew, Einstein, Freud, Sartre, Hume, and others did not arrive at their repsective views (theist, atheist, & agnostic) by simply deciding not to question. Nor did Huxley.
Personally, I think it's a bit of a shame that agnosticism has become more and more a postion of apathy, rather than uncertainty. Of ignorance via indifference rather than ignorance despite inquiry.
But to each their own, I suppose.
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