In order to understand the meaning of the term agnostic, the first thing we have to explain is that it is a word that derives from the Greek. Specifically, it is the result of the sum of several components of said language:
-The prefix “a-“, which comes to be translated as “without”.
-The noun “gnosis”, which means “knowledge”.
-The suffix “-tikos”, which is used to indicate “relative to”.
The term agnosticism as such is considered to have been created by the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 – 1895). Specifically, he coined it in 1869, although there are theories that perhaps the same, although the term as such did not yet exist, was the work of other previous authors. Thus, it is determined that agnostic origins can already be found in relevant figures such as Protagoras, for example.
According to Digopaul, agnostic is an adjective that qualifies what is linked to agnosticism: a philosophical position that maintains that divine questions and what goes beyond experience are beyond the understanding of human beings. Agnostic individuals, therefore, affirm that the divine is not accessible to the understanding of people.
Agnostics, in the broadest sense, believe that certain claims cannot be analyzed from the truth values. According to logic, something can be true or false. For agnostics, expressions linked to metaphysical and religious themes cannot be submitted to this consideration since they are not knowable.
Typically, agnosticism is declared based on reflection on the existence, or not, of God. The agnostic maintains that he is not in a position to affirm the existence of God, but neither to deny it: what he does is to leave the belief in suspense since the existence of God is not susceptible of consideration according to criteria of truthfulness and falsehood. In other words: the existence or non-existence of God is beyond the understanding of the human being.
This posture is different from that held by atheists. Those who defend atheism do not believe in the existence of God. In some cases, there is talk of agnostic atheists since they do not believe in the existence of God but they acknowledge that they are not in a position to know if indeed a deity exists.
Others, on the other hand, are described as weak agnostics. These subjects currently believe that the existence of God is beyond human understanding, although they leave open the possibility that this judgment will change in the future based on new evidence.
In the same way, we cannot overlook the existence of other types of agnosticism, such as the following:
-The strong or strict agnostic, which makes it clear that neither he nor any other person can know whether or not a deity exists.
-Agnostic theism, which is characterized by the fact that it affirms that it does not know the existence of a deity but that, in any case, it believes in it.
-Pragmatic agnosticism. It also responds to the name of pragmatic and does not give importance to the existence or not of a deity, since it considers that even if it existed it would be indifferent to the well-being of the human being and the universe in general.
