Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
The battle of Philo against the Stoics is the battle of personal monotheism against impersonal pantheism, of religious faith and revelation against arrogant rationalism, and of idealism against materialism. Hostile as he is to the Stoic intellectual dogmatism, Philo is none the less opposed to its converse, intellectual skepticism and agnosticism.
Those in whom personal affection is profound will have the gospel of "In Memoriam" and Lucy Smith. Active, serviceable, unimaginative men will often be content with a cheerful agnosticism. Some, after pushing their inquiry to the farthest, and keeping it united with right living, will rest in "devout and contented uncertainty."
So far as this goes we have here perfectly sound advice. But why call it Agnosticism? It is no more than the perfectly sound advice that we must be honest in our investigations, and make no claim to certainty where the conditions of certainty do not exist. But we have no more right to call this Agnosticism than we have to give the multiplication table a sectarian or party label.
Earnest objections have, however, been made to the tendency to regard nature as a mechanism. To one of the most curious of them we have been treated lately by Dr. Ward in his book on "Naturalism and Agnosticism." It is there ingeniously argued that, when we examine with care the fundamental concepts of the science of mechanics, we find them to be self-contradictory and absurd.
Atheism, materialism and agnosticism are an old, old trinity, but they had up to our own time been at the mercy of more positive attitudes through their inability to really answer those insurgent questions: Whence? Whither? and Why? Creation had plainly enough demanded a creator.
Once upon a time, I was discussing with an acquaintance the not unfamiliar question of Immortality. I professed Agnosticism strongly impregnated with incredulity. My friend had no misgivings, no doubts on the subject whatever. Absolute certainty is the prerogative of the orthodox. He had taken University honours, and was a man of high position at the Bar.
Thus the agnosticism of to-day will contribute to the reverence of the future, while I firmly believe that the religion of Humanity will come to be so interpreted as not to wholly exclude belief in an Existence anterior to man and to all things, from whom he and all he knows aboriginally sprang, unto whom he and all things ultimately return.
Indeed, to say that a man is an Agnostic nowadays tells one no more than calling a man religious indicates to which one of the world's sects he gives his adherence. The only aspect of Agnosticism that we are here vitally concerned with is its relation to religion, or specifically with the god-idea. But it will be necessary to say a word, in passing, on at least one other phase.
The reasoning here reminds one of the conclusions of a still more recent writer, who while condemning what he considers the fatalism of Calvinistic theology, still asserts that its logic leaves no alternative but the denial of a personal God. And an early Buddhist philosopher has left a fragment which gives the very same reason for agnosticism.
Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking