Agnosticism

“ The question really is not whether certain avowed agnostics are not as good men as certain professing Christians; but whether the moral excellences of the good agnostic are the product, the fruit, of agnosticism, in the same sense in which the virtues of the Christian are the product of Christianity. ”

“ Between agnosticism and gnosticism, theism stands midway, and holds to what is true in each. With agnosticism, it goes so far as to confess that we cannot know how Being made itself or us. With gnosticism, it goes so far as to insist that we can know Being's character when made, and how it asks us to behave. ”

“ Let us now take the question raised by agnosticism as to these assumptions, which constitute a large part of the common faith of mankind. The question is not whether these assumptions are right: the agnostic declines to discuss that question; he does not know whether they are right or wrong, he has no means of deciding, they are too high for him. The question is whether the agnostic himself succeeds in making, as well as endeavouring to make, no assumptions on these points. ”

“ Recognition of this other mediation, accordingly, is all-important to any final appraisal of the meaning of agnosticism, to an appraisal that is justified just through being superior to the special interests of formal and professional science. Is it not one of the functions of the various negatives in our human life really to save life from the narrowness of its various professional abstractions, and is not the attitude of agnosticism but one of these negations? ”

“ It was inevitable that a conflict should arise between agnosticism and theology; or rather I ought to say between agnosticism and ecclesiasticism. For theology, the science, is one thing; and ecclesiasticism, the championship of a foregone conclusion [2] as to the truth of a particular form of theology, is another. With scientific theology, agnosticism has no quarrel. ”

“ At this point it would be interesting to show in detail how action—that is, volition or application to life as central to the meaning of agnosticism—is not only the logically appropriate nor yet only the sentimentally ideal, but also the inevitable, the inner and actually real motive, the natural outcome of the scientific standpoint in each one of its three attitudes. ”

“ It is shown in detail that the various theological explanations of the dealings of God with man, when logically pressed, issue in a confession of ignorance. And what is this but agnosticism? You may call your doubt a mystery, but mystery is only the theological phrase for agnosticism. ”

“ Atheism and agnosticism would appear to be phases in the religious development of the human race, the positions into which various types of mind are driven when dissatisfied with the explanation of the purpose, duty, and future of the individual as set forth by a particular Church. ”

“ The skeptical method is not only a good, but also a necessary beginning of religious philosophy. But we are bound to go deeper than mere superficial agnosticism. If, however, any reader is already sure that we cannot go deeper, and that modern popular agnosticism has exhausted all that can be said on religious questions, then we bid him an immediate and joyous farewell. ”

“ The unbiassed answer of pure agnosticism ought reasonably to be, in the words of John Hunter, 'Do not think; try.' That is, in this case, try the only experiment available—the experiment of faith. Do the doctrine, and if Christianity be true, the verification will come, not indeed mediately through any course of speculative reason, but immediately by spiritual intuition. Only if a man has faith enough to make this venture honestly, will he be in a just position for deciding the issue. ”

“ The extreme view that knowledge of God is impossible, even with the aid of revelation, is the latest form of religious Agnosticism. The new theory regards religion and science as two distinct and separate accounts of experience, and seeks to combine an agnostic intellect with a believing heart. ”

“ There is a fearfully prevailing agnosticism along here in the Church just at this time. We greatly fear that a vast majority of our Church members are now in this school of spiritual agnosticism, and really deem it to be a virtue to be there. ”

“ The facts which the science of religion establishes may be used and are used for different and for contradictory purposes. The man who is agnostic or atheist uses them to support his atheism or agnosticism ”

“ Similarly, when it is said, 'supposing Christianity true,' what will be meant is—'supposing for the sake of argument, that the Christian system as a whole, from its earliest dawn in Judaism, to the phase of its development at the present time, is the highest revelation of Himself which a personal Deity has vouchsafed to mankind.' This I intend to signify an attitude of pure agnosticism as regards any particular dogma of Christianity—even that of the Incarnation. ”

“ We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is usually called Agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and in the manner in which they are perceptible; it has no right and no power to transgress these limits. ”

“ This is what agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to agnosticism. That which agnostics deny and repudiate as immoral is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions. The justification of the agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its application, whether in the field of natural or in that of civil history ”

“ But if so, it seems that agnosticism—if allowed to develop freely on its own lines, without artificial hindrance—must needs become a "Christian agnosticism." And it only remains to ask, why in the world should not such an agnostic "go to church," fall in with the religious symbolism in ordinary use, and contribute his moral aid to those who have taken service under the Christian name on purpose to purify gross and carnal eyes, till they become aware of the Great Unknown behind the veil, and so come to relatively know what absolutely passes knowledge? ”

“ But neither per se nor per aliud has agnosticism (if I know anything about it) the least pretension to be a religious philosophy; so far from resting on ignorance of history, and that social evolution of which history is the account, it is and has been the inevitable result of the strict adherence to scientific methods by historical investigators. ”

“ Such agnosticism we may all respect, for it is very different from the noisy, clamorous thing which, aping in name the humility of greater men, insists that the sense limitations imposed upon its own intelligence shall forthwith be erected into a dogma to be accepted as infallible by everybody else's intelligence. Be as reverent as Darwin in your agnosticism, as tolerant as Comte, we would say to such men, and there is much to commend in your teaching ”

“ Assume an omnipotent, omniscient and ethically perfect deity, and it follows that, when facts do not square with your sense of justice, you must either suspect the individual of secret sins or proclaim that God's ways are past finding out. In other words, the search for a theodicy leads to agnosticism. Since you don't really know anything about the world, one hypothesis is as good as {155} another. But agnosticism is a cheap way of establishing a position, and is likely to suggest to the reflective that the whole setting of theodicy is at fault. ”

“ An agnostic nation will find itself sooner or later unsuited for its environment, and will either come to believe in some solution of these spiritual problems or stagnate and perish. And something of the same result will follow from agnosticism in the family and in the individual. ”

“ Tell me why it is, if Christianity is true that its foundations are melting down like wax in the light of Modern Science?' Tell me why it is, if the Bible is an inspired book, a divine revelation, that scarcely a single really eminent scientist or scholar of the present day accepts it as such? Tell me why it is that Atheism, Agnosticism, and Rationalism are making such rapid headway among the educated and intelligent, in every civilized country, both in the church and out of it? That the dogmas upon which Christianity rests are doomed ”

“ The agnostics have been driven back on agnosticism; and are already recovering from the shock. They find themselves in a really unknown world under really unknown gods; a world which is more mystical, or at least more mysterious. For in the Victorian age the agnostics were not really agnostics. ”

“ They have denied the objective validity of the categories or necessary conditions of thought. This denial is the distinctive feature of all modern agnosticism ; and the theist who would vindicate the reality of his knowledge of God, the legi timacy of his belief in God, the worth of his religious experience, must refute the reasonings by which it has been supported ; show that consciousness testifies against it, the subjectivity of any true category being unthinkable and inconceivable ”

“ The encyclical proceeded to deal with the subject in three parts, First came the analysis of Modernist teaching, with agnosticism as the basis of its philosophy and immanence as its positive side, thus placing the explanation of religion in man alone, and lifting conscience to the same level as revelation. Faith and science to the Modernist are separate, the latter being supreme, and religious dogmas are not only inadequate but must be changeable to be adapted to living needs. ”

“ Let us see what this repudiation amounts to, and we shall then realize what, in the present day, is the intellectual basis which theologic religion claims. Theologic religion does not say that within limits the agnostic principle is not perfectly valid and has not led to the discovery of a vast body of truth. But what it does say is this: That the truths which are thus discovered are not the only truths which are certainly and surely discoverable. The fundamental principle of agnosticism is that nothing is certainly true but such truths as are demonstrated or demonstrable. ”

“ Do not these wise men know that the thinkers and doers of the earth, in overwhelming majority, have been creed men? Creeds may exist without religion, but neither religion, nor philosophy, nor politics, nor society, can exist without creeds. There must be a creed in the head, or there cannot be religion in the heart. You must believe that Deity exists, before you can reverence Deity. You must believe in the fact of humanity, or you cannot love your fellows. A creed is but the concentration, the crystallization, of belief. ”

“ Is the dogma of the existence of God of less value than atheism? Is the conviction of the existence of a world of spirits less substantial than the philosophy of materialistic monism? Is the doctrine of the origin of the human soul from the creating hand of God found inferior to the notion that the soul has developed from the lower stages of animal life? Should the holy teaching of Christianity, doctrines believed by the best periods in the world's history, believed in and professed by minds like those of an Augustine, a Thomas, and a Leibnitz ”

“ Their objection against revelation is founded upon the pretended sufficiency and perfection of human reason, to teach all men all that is wise, and holy, and divine, in religion. But how do they prove this perfection of human reason? Do they appeal to mankind as proofs of it? Do they produce any body of men in this or any other age, that without any assistance from revelation, have attained to this perfection of religious knowledge? This is not so much as pretended to; the history of such men is entirely wanting. ”

“ And if the demands of man's moral or affectional nature are a reason for such indulgences, then his aspirations to the great primal cause of the known, the unknown, and (to us here and now) unknowable wonders and mysteries of the universe without, and of ourselves within, is also justifiable in reason, and ought not by wit and eloquence to be juggled out of the ingenuous mind. The masses are governed by religion, directly and indirectly, to an extent much greater than at first thought appears. The daily life of the agnostic himself is shaped by his Christian heredity and environment. ”

“ For our second conception Natural Religion is viewed simply as the voice of human nature itself, whose faith is to be expressed, whose ideals are to be recorded, whose will and whose needs are to be, above all, consulted and portrayed, since, for this view, the consciousness of those who believe in religious truth is, when once made articulate, its own apology. But, for our third conception, the office of the student of Natural Religion is to deal with the most fundamental metaphysical problems. ”

“ On the one hand, we behold reason, through an excessively mystic tendency, enslaved to a blind faith—in fact, stifled; and faith itself, as a consequence, deprived of its foundation, lifeless and powerless. On the other hand, we behold reason in a wisely adjusted harmony with faith and science, triumphing over the dead-letter of the Bible, the deceiving testimony of sense, and every other illegitimate influence, and thereby imparting firmness to faith in the suprasensible, and in all real authority. ”

“ The test is a perfectly plain one of fact. Theology based on pure reason must in point of fact convince men universally. If it did not, wherein would its superiority consist? If it only formed sects and schools, even as sentiment and mysticism form them, how would it fulfill its programme of freeing us from personal caprice and waywardness? This perfectly definite practical test of the pretensions of philosophy to found religion on universal reason simplifies my procedure to-day. I need not discredit philosophy by laborious criticism of its arguments. ”