Editing Agnosticism (section)

===United Kingdom===
====Charles Darwin====
[[File:Charles Darwin seated crop.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Charles Darwin]] in 1854]]
Raised in a religious environment, [[Charles Darwin]] (1809–1882) studied to be an [[Anglicanism|Anglican]] clergyman. While eventually doubting parts of his faith, Darwin continued to help in church affairs, even while avoiding church attendance. Darwin stated that it would be "absurd to doubt that a man might be an ardent theist and an evolutionist".<ref name=Fordyce>[http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-12041 Letter 12041] – Darwin, C. R. to Fordyce, John, May 7, 1879. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140618112333/http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-12041 Archived] from the original on June 29, 2014.</ref><ref name=spencer>[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/17/darwin-evolution-religion Darwin's Complex loss of Faith] ''[[The Guardian]]'' September 17, 2009. [https://web.archive.org/web/20141006221012/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/17/darwin-evolution-religion Archived] from the original on June 29, 2014</ref> Although reticent about his religious views, in 1879 he wrote that "I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. – I think that generally ... an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."<ref name=Fordyce/><ref name=Belief>{{cite web|url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/content/view/130/125/|title=Darwin Correspondence Project – Belief: historical essay|access-date=November 25, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090225124103/http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/content/view/130/125/ |archive-date=February 25, 2009 }}</ref>

====Thomas Henry Huxley====
[[File:ThomasHenryHuxley.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Thomas Henry Huxley]] in the 1860s. He was the first to decisively coin the term ''agnosticism''.]]

Agnostic views are as old as [[philosophical skepticism]], but the terms agnostic and agnosticism were created by [[Thomas Henry Huxley|Huxley]] (1825–1895) to sum up his thoughts on contemporary developments of metaphysics about the "unconditioned" ([[Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet|William Hamilton]]) and the "unknowable" ([[Herbert Spencer]]). Though Huxley began to use the term ''agnostic'' in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some time before that date. In a letter of September 23, 1860, to [[Charles Kingsley]], Huxley discussed his views extensively:<ref name="Huxley1997">{{cite book|author=Thomas Henry Huxley|author-link=Thomas Henry Huxley|title=The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley|url=https://archive.org/details/majorproseofthom00huxl|url-access=registration|year=1997|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-1864-6|pages=[https://archive.org/details/majorproseofthom00huxl/page/357 357]–}}
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{{cite book|author=Leonard Huxley|title=Thomas Henry Huxley A Character Sketch|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YKNj1u0R4JcC&pg=PT41|date=February 7, 2012|publisher=tredition|isbn=978-3-8472-0297-4|pages=41–}}</ref>
{{blockquote|I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no ''a priori'' objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about ''a priori'' difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter&nbsp;...

It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions&nbsp;...

That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.}}

And again, to the same correspondent, May 6, 1863:<ref name="HuxleyHuxley2011">{{cite book|author1=Leonard Huxley|author2=Thomas Henry Huxley|title=Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-azeZXAf6MMC&pg=PA347|date=December 22, 2011|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-108-04045-7|pages=347–}}</ref>
{{blockquote|I have never had the least sympathy with the ''a priori'' reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father [who] loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I—who am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for our deeds—have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them.}}

Of the origin of the name agnostic to describe this attitude, Huxley gave the following account:<ref>{{cite book| title=Collected Essays, Vol. V: Science and Christian Tradition| first=Thomas| last=Huxley| isbn= 1-85506-922-9| publisher=Macmillan and Co 1893| pages=237–239}}</ref>
{{blockquote|When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis"{{mdash}}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 insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion&nbsp;...

So 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.&nbsp;... To my great satisfaction the term took.}}

====William Stewart Ross====
[[William Stewart Ross]] (1844–1906) wrote under the name of Saladin. He was associated with Victorian Freethinkers and the organization the British Secular Union. He edited the ''[[Secular Review]]'' from 1882; it was renamed ''Agnostic Journal and Eclectic Review'' and closed in 1907. Ross championed agnosticism in opposition to the atheism of [[Charles Bradlaugh]] as an open-ended spiritual exploration.<ref>Alastair Bonnett 'The Agnostic Saladin' ''History Today'', 2013, 63,2, pp.&nbsp;47–52
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In ''Why I am an Agnostic'' ({{circa|1889}}) he claims that agnosticism is "the very reverse of atheism".<ref name="RossTaylor1889">{{cite book|author1=William Stewart Ross|author2=Joseph Taylor|title=Why I Am an Agnostic: Being a Manual of Agnosticism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nGNEmgEACAAJ|year=1889|publisher=W. Stewart & Company}}</ref>

====Bertrand Russell====
[[File:Russell1907-2.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Bertrand Russell]]]]
[[Bertrand Russell]] (1872–1970) declared ''[[Why I Am Not a Christian]]'' in 1927, a classic statement of agnosticism.<ref name="Users.drew.edu">{{cite web|url=http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html |title=Why I Am Not A Christian, by Bertrand Russell |publisher=Users.drew.edu |date=March 6, 1927 |access-date=February 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140301002401/http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html |archive-date=March 1, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy }}</ref><ref name="Russell1992">
{{cite book|author=Bertrand Russell|title=Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_f6LMwEACAAJ|year=1992|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-07918-1}}
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He calls upon his readers to "stand on their own two feet and look fair and square at the world with a fearless attitude and a free intelligence".<ref name="Russell1992" />

In 1939, Russell gave a lecture on ''The existence and nature of God'', in which he characterized himself as an atheist. He said:<ref>{{cite book| last=Russell| first= Bertrand| title=Collected Papers, Vol 10|page=255}}</ref>
{{blockquote|The existence and nature of God is a subject of which I can discuss only half. If one arrives at a negative conclusion concerning the first part of the question, the second part of the question does not arise; and my position, as you may have gathered, is a negative one on this matter.}}

However, later in the same lecture, discussing modern non-anthropomorphic concepts of God, Russell states:<ref>''Collected Papers, Vol. 10'', p. 258</ref>
{{blockquote|That sort of God is, I think, not one that can actually be disproved, as I think the omnipotent and benevolent creator can.}}

In Russell's 1947 pamphlet, ''Am I An Atheist or an Agnostic?'' (subtitled ''A Plea For Tolerance in the Face of New Dogmas''), he ruminates on the problem of what to call himself:<ref name="Russell1997">
{{cite book|author=Bertrand Russell|title=Last Philosophical Testament: 1943–68|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r1jBN5iehKsC&pg=PA91|year=1997|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-09409-2|pages=91–}}</ref>
{{blockquote|As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.}}

In his 1953 essay, ''What Is An Agnostic?'' Russell states:<ref name="Russell2009">{{cite book|author=Bertrand Russell|title=The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lm58AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA557|date=March 2, 2009|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-02867-2|pages=557–}}
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{{blockquote|An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time.

Are Agnostics Atheists?

No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial.}}

Later in the essay, Russell adds:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://scepsis.net/eng/articles/id_5.php |title='What Is an agnostic?' by Bertrand Russell |publisher=Scepsis.net |access-date=February 2, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130822181953/http://scepsis.net/eng/articles/id_5.php |archive-date=August 22, 2013 |url-status=live |df=mdy }}</ref>
{{blockquote|I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these events then produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least of the existence of some superhuman intelligence.}}

====Leslie Weatherhead====
{{See also|Christian agnosticism}}
{{Wikiquote|Leslie Weatherhead}}
In 1965, Christian theologian [[Leslie Weatherhead]] (1893–1976) published ''The Christian Agnostic'', in which he argues:<ref name="Weatherhead1990">{{cite book|last=Weatherhead |first=Leslie D.|title=The Christian Agnostic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-ZODJwAACAAJ|date=September 1990|publisher=Abingdon Press|isbn=978-0-687-06980-4}}
</ref>
{{blockquote|...&nbsp;many professing agnostics are nearer belief in the true God than are many conventional church-goers who believe in a body that does not exist whom they miscall God.}}

Although radical and unpalatable to conventional theologians, Weatherhead's ''agnosticism'' falls far short of Huxley's, and short even of ''weak agnosticism'':<ref name="Weatherhead1990" />
{{blockquote|Of course, the human soul will always have the power to reject God, for choice is essential to its nature, but I cannot believe that anyone will finally do this.}}