Where did agnosticism start?

Answer 1

The Apostle Paul used the term when he gave his famous speech to the Athenian philosophers atop the Areopagus hill. He said that he had noticed a shrine to the unknown God (Gr agnostos theos) Acts 17:23

Agnosticism is not a religion; it is the conviction that there is no way to prove one way or another whether God exists. A=without; gnosis=knowledge. An agnostic is without knowledge of God.

Agnosticism is a necessary component of gnosticism. It is in fact a guiding "goat", in that one doubts the nature and evidence of knowledge, and certainly of absolute truth. As such, Agnosticism does not normally exist as a religion on it own, but as a component of a growing faith that still accepts the believer cannot be sure they know what they think they do. It is also a necessary component of sciences as well as philosophy.

In either case, the accousticoi or gnosticoi who thinks they have all the answers is afraid they don't, and are allowing their ignorance to lead them into unnecessary suffering.

Answer 2

First of all, Agnosticism isn's a religion as such. It's an answer to religion. A Theist believes in a god. An atheist believes there is no god. An agnostic is in between - They believe the answer is hard or impossible to know, so an agnostic believes you can't know for sure if there's a god or not. To be really comprehensive... Some religious people believe that knowledge isn't the issue, but faith ; it's important to believe in a god because if you believe in him without proof, this shows god that you are a person who wants to be good. If he was proovable through science or logic, they value of faith would be less so. That might sound stupid, but when we make friends in everyday life, this tends also to be a matter of faith. The government can tell you who your local police are, but not who your friends are. Pascal believed that people ought to be taught to believe in god even if he definitely doesn't exist, because otherwise they'll do lots of evil things. Agnostics don't care about any of that. They think it really doesn't matter whether there's a god or not, because in either case, what's good and bad is still good and bad, what's true, false, possible or impossible, desirable or or not, still remains the same. Life is still life. This doesn't mean all agnostics are the same. Having decided that there is no way of knowing whether a god-centred religion can answer life's problems, some people deal with the problems of truth, morality and beauty through other philosophies. Existentialism, utiltarianism and many other philosophies are busy trying to do this through logic. Many religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism...) also celebrate life and approach its challenges from a position which neither asserts nor denies god. And of course the arts, our relationships First of all, Agnosticism isn's a religion as such. It's an answer to religion. A Theist believes in a god. An Atheist believes there is no god. An agnostic is in between - They believe the answer is hard or impossible to know, so an agnostic believes you can't know for sure if there's a god or not. To be really comprehensive... Some religious people believe that knowledge isn't the issue, but faith ; it's important to believe in a god because if you believe in him without proof, this shows god that you are a person who wants to be good. If he was proovable through science or logic, they value of faith would be less so. That might sound stupid, but when we make friends in everyday life, this tends also to be a matter of faith. The government can tell you who your local police are, but not who your friends are. Pascal believed that people ought to be taught to believe in god even if he definitely doesn't exist, because otherwise they'll do lots of evil things. Agnostics don't care about any of that. They think it really doesn't matter whether there's a god or not, because in either case, what's good and bad is still good and bad, what's true, false, possible or impossible, desirable or or not, still remains the same. Life is still life. This doesn't mean all agnostics are the same. Having decided that there is no way of knowing whether a god-centred religion can answer life's problems, some people deal with the problems of truth, morality and beauty through other philosophies. Existentialism, utiltarianism and many other philosophies are busy trying to do this through logic. Many religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism...) also celebrate life and approach its challenges from a position which neither asserts nor denies god. And of course the arts, our relationships and our everyday experience all give us guidance to the Big Questions in life, without any guidance from a god we can easily proove. so going back to the question, the approach of worrying about life first and god later probably came up before anybody thought of religion at all.

Answer 3

All humans are born as atheists. We inherit the god of our parents.

Agnosticism, is not the natural state of humans, as, a concept of a god must first be introduced to the human.

Agnosticism, the belief that the existence of any god cannot be proved nor disproved, would result after their parents introduce the idea of a god, and then the realization it can NOT be proven, arises in the rational mind. There have probably been rational people since before man invented the concept of a god to explain the weather.

Answer 4

There was not a specific date that agnosticism was invented - many will have been unsure of religion since its beginning. The word agnostic, however, can be traced back to Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist who first coined the term in 1869. However, earlier written works have promoted agnostic opinions; for example, Protagoras, a 5th-century BC Greek philosopher, and a creation myth in the Rig Veda, an ancient Sanskrit text.