An agnostic says "I don't believe I can truly know for sure", while a gnostic says "I'm absolutely sure"
What about someone who says "I don't know yet, but I might in the future"? That's more how I understand agnosticism.
I guess that is a type of agnosticism, but it's not the type espoused by Thomas Huxley (who coined the term) and others. Huxley's agnosticism was a reaction to what he saw as the arrogance of strong atheists and strong theists.
May I first applaud Innominate for introducing the humilty of acknowledged angnostic atheism into the forum. It gets up my nose when anyone, either theist or atheist, makes a statement about their philosophical position and calls it a fact, rather than a belief. Even the most ardent monotheist cannot say, “I know God exists as a fact.” What they should be saying is, “I strongly believe in the existence of God. My belief is a fact.”
The existence, or non-existence, of God, is a fact. Whether people believe or disbelieve in Him will not alter the reality or unreality of His existence. But the sticky point is, as humans we have limitations which prohibit us from conclusively determining that fact. We find ourselves with pieces of evidence, which we then interpret to support our own stance and strengthen our belief. But what remains is that to date, there has been no piece of proof to conclusively prove or disprove the existence of God to humanity. And, as Inominate says, there are many who believe that the existence of this proof is actually impossible.
So instead, we are all left with a leap of faith. Even those who claim to have to faith, have faith in their claim.
On another point, I understand the difficulty that the definition of agnosticism has created. I think it partially comes from a developing definition – that is, what it is commonly believed to mean now is not exactly what it originally meant. For example, I could write a story entitled, “The Gay bundle of sticks.” If I was truly using the original meanings, still widely used until the middle of the 20th century, you would expect the story to be about a happy and carefree bundle of sticks. But use those terms now, and they have a completely different set of meanings, which would completely alter your expectation of what would be in that story. (Please note, this example is not designed to be inflammatory, but simply an illustration of how drastic a word’s meaning may change in a short period of time.)
Whilst agnosticism originally had a meaning more pertinent to the ‘unprovable’ nature of belief and disbelief, I understand the term now to commonly mean, “I do not know.” That may be a “I don’t know and I don’t care,” it may be a “I don’t know yet, but I am on a quest to find out,” or then again, it may be “I think I may believe in established view X, but I’m not really sold on the whole package yet, and retain some doubts.”
