Agnosticisms

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A philosophical stance advocating the view that the existence of a deity or deities is unknown or unknowable
2. A position characterized by skepticism towards claims of knowledge regarding the divine or the metaphysical
3. A belief system that emphasizes uncertainty and the limits of human understanding concerning spiritual matters

Etymology: Agnosticisms is simply the plural of "agnosticism," so the story belongs to that root. Thomas Henry Huxley, the English biologist and defender of Darwin, coined the underlying term, and he did it on purpose: he needed a name for a position distinct from both belief and outright denial. He built it from the Greek prefix "a-," meaning "without," and "gnostic," from "gnostikos," meaning "knowing" or "having knowledge," with the suffix "-ism" added to turn it into a doctrine. The result was a deliberate word for a stance about knowledge rather than about belief itself. Huxley's coinage described someone who claims that the existence of a god is unknown, or cannot be known, and who therefore neither affirms nor denies it. The plural form simply counts distinct versions of that position, such as different arguments for why divine existence lies beyond human knowledge.

Synonyms: skepticisms, doubts, uncertainties, ambiguities, indecisions

Antonyms: certainty, faith, conviction, belief, trust