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Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. [1] [2] [3] It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to personal limitations rather than a worldview.
Also called humanocentrism. The practice, conscious or otherwise, of regarding the existence and concerns of human beings as the central fact of the universe. This is similar, but not identical, to the practice of relating all that happens in the universe to the human experience. To clarify, the first position concludes that the fact of human existence is the point of universal existence; the ...
The early church heresiologists created an interpretive definition of Gnosticism, and modern scholarship followed this example and created a categorical definition. According to Williams the term needs replacing to more accurately reflect those movements it comprises, [ 11 ] and suggests to replace it with the term "the Biblical demiurgical ...
Agnostic atheism — or atheistic agnosticism — is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism.Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity, and they are agnostic because they claim that the existence of a divine entity or entities is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.
Agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. An agnostic theist believes in the existence of one or more gods, but regards the basis of this proposition as unknown or inherently unknowable. The agnostic theist may also or alternatively be agnostic regarding the properties of the god or gods that they ...
[5] [6] Related (but separate) is the claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable; a stance known as agnosticism. [7] [8] Agnostic theism is a personal belief in one or more deities along with acceptance that the existence or non-existence of the deity or deities is fundamentally unknowable.
In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."
The Oxford English Dictionary (2007) does not have an entry for nontheism or non-theism, but it does have an entry for non-theist, defined as "A person who is not a theist", and an entry for the adjectival non-theistic. [citation needed] An early usage of the hyphenated non-theism is by George Holyoake in 1852, [5] who introduces it because: