Talk:Agnosticism

re: "for being a belief in error for denial (explicit in the case of atheists and some agnostics, implicit in the case of other agnostics) of the truth of God and Jesus Christ."

Is this much to narrow a focus?

As I understand it, agnosticism is merely looking at the evidence and coming to the conclusion: "I don't know."

If a person is an agnostic with regards to the existance of "a Supreme Being" without ever having heard the Gospel, this is a case of ignorance rather than denial (implicit or explicit.)

Ok, but in your definition of agnosticism, you defined it as "looking at the evidence." Doesn't looking at the evidence imply that you would have some level of religious knowledge and thus be aware of the Gospel? It seems to me that agnosticism is different from simple ignorance in that an agnostic has made a conscious philosophical choice, after "looking at the evidence," that they aren't certain enough of Christianity's truth to accept it. It seems difficult for one be aware enough of different belief systems to accept agnosticism while at the same time never having heard of Christ, though I'm not saying that it's impossible (approximately 2 billion people around the world profess some form of Christianity, and though I don't know amount of people who call themselves agnostics, I'm reasonably certain that it's much smaller.) Because agnosticism is more prevalent amongst those of higher socioeconomic classes, who are in general better educated, I'm not really seeing the validity of your argument. Tell me if I've missed something. Gabriela 17:04, January 13, 2008 (PST)

Agnosticism is most generally the positive belief (rather than a lack of belief) that it is impossible to know whether there is a deity. Literally, its etymology means "ignorant," of course, but etymology is not always the only means of knowing the way a word is currently used. (Let, for instance, has meant both "prevent" and "allow" in the history of English.)

Agnostic is also used to refer to not having come to a conclusion, i.e., "I don't know." (Whether evidence has been examined is beside the point.) This is not the same as "One cannot know," which is the stricter and probably more common use of the term. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 18:44, January 14, 2008 (PST)