Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions.

He is known primarily for three claims ( 1 ) that man is the measure of all things, often interpreted as a sort of moral relativism, ( 2 ) that he could make the " worse ( or weaker ) argument appear the better ( or stronger )" ( see Sophism ) and ( 3 ) that one could not tell if the gods existed or not ( see Agnosticism ).

In his Guesses at the Riddle of Existence ( 1897 ), he abandons the faith in Christianity expressed in his lecture of 1861 on Historical Progress ( where he forecast the speedy reunion of Christendom on the ” basis of free conviction “), and writes in a spirit “ not of Agnosticism, if Agnosticism imports despair of spiritual truth, but of free and hopeful inquiry, the way for which it is necessary to clear by removing the wreck of that upon which we can found our faith no more .”

Modern philosophy presents a remarkable gradation, from Pantheism, which finds God in everything, to Agnosticism, which declares that He is beyond the reach of knowledge.

* Agnostics — see Agnosticism

Throughout its history the church has been charged with immoral and illegal deeds, including money laundering, charlatanism, witchcraft, and intolerance toward Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, other Protestant and Christian groups, Spiritism, Neo-Paganism, New Japanese Religions, Atheism, Agnosticism, homosexuality and especially Afro-Brazilian syncretic religions such as Umbanda and Candomblé.

Shelley scholar Carlos Baker states that " the title of his college pamphlet should have been The Necessity of Agnosticism rather than The Necessity of Atheism ," while historian David Berman argues that Shelley was an atheist, both because he characterized himself as such, and because " he denies the existence of God in both published works and private letters " during the same period.

At the same time rationalism and literary criticism reduced the possible role of the miraculous, so that the philosophical systems in vogue at the time taught among other things that the existence of God could never be known ( see Agnosticism ).

He also wrote Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution ( 1881 ); The Ethical Import of Darwinism ( 1888 ); Belief in God ( 1890 ), and Agnosticism and Religion ( 1896 ).

While he celebrates Christmas ( as seen in the Christmas special of the series ) and other holidays, his scientific interests may point to Agnosticism or Atheism ; however, these subjects are rarely touched on the show, due to its viewers.

Among his other publications are The Irish Confederates and the Rebellion of 1798 ( 1850 ), The History of the Atlantic Telegraph ( 1866 ), Faith or Agnosticism?

* Atheism, Agnosticism, Noncognitivism ( 1998 ) by Theodore M. Drange

The article promoted a New Agnosticism to counter the rise in popularity of the New Atheism.

Though raised Jewish, Berman wavers in his belief between secular Judaism and Agnosticism.

Agnosticism and Atheism enjoy social prestige, according to the general Western European secularization.

This is the only case in modern history of a people of Britannic origin submitting without continued struggle to what they view as foreign domination.

The principal defender of this view of primary experience as `` causal efficacy '' is Alfred North Whitehead.

All we want from Dr. Huxley's statement is the feeling that this is an open world, in the view of the best scientific opinion, with practically no directional commitments as to what may happen next, and no important confinements with respect to what may be possible.

The maturity in this point of view lies in its recognition that no basic problem is ever solved without being clearly understood.

The idea here is one of discharge but this must stand in opposition to a second view, Plato's notion of the arousal of emotion.

A fourth view is the transformation of emotion, as in Housman's fine phrase on the arts: they `` transform and beautify our inner nature ''.

Some historians have found his point of view not to their taste, others have complained that he makes the Tory tradition appear `` contemptible rather than intelligible '', while a sympathetic critic has remarked that the `` intricate interplay of social dynamics and political activity of which, at times, politicians are the ignorant marionettes is not a field for the exercise of his talents ''.

He tends to underestimate -- or perhaps to view charitably -- the brutality and the violence of the age, so that there is an idyllic quality in these pages which hazes over some of its sharp reality.

The other is that the charge for cabanas and parasols, though modest from an American point of view, still is a little high for many Athenians.

In Krutch's view, this is one way to show how literature may be moral in effect without employing the explicit methods of a moralist.

This is nevertheless a minority view.

This new vision of man that the narrator acquires is also accompanied by a re-vision of his previous view.

From this point of view the `` militant mobs '' of the past, stirred into action by one ideology or another, were all composed of `` intellectuals '' -- and this is not the level on which the essence of mankind can be discovered.

Krim's typicality consists only in his New Yorker's view that New York is the world ; ;

Around that statue in the green park where children play and lovers walk in twos and there is a glowing view of the whole city, in that park are the rows of marble busts of Garibaldi's fallen men, the ones who one day rushed out of the Porta San Pancrazio and, under fire all the way, up the long, straight narrow lane to take, then lose the high ground of the Villa Doria Pamphili.

That notion is fantastically wrong-headed from several points of view.

It is a war to stay out of today, especially in view of the fact that President Ngo Dinh Diem apparently does not want United States troops.

The football opponent on homecoming is, of course, selected with the view that said opponent will have little more chance than did a Christian when thrown to one of the emperor's lions.

What Mr. Kennedy, in fact, wrote was: `` It is the Department's view that no anti-trust enforcement considerations justify any loss of revenue of this proportion ''.

The headline is offensive, particularly in view of the total inaccuracy of the editorial.

In view of the increasing shortage of usable surface and ground water in many parts of the Nation and the importance of finding new sources of supply to meet its present and future water needs, it is the policy of the Congress to provide for the development of practicable low-cost means for the large-scale production of water of a quality suitable for municipal, industrial, agricultural, and other beneficial consumptive uses from saline water, and for studies and research related thereto.

While it is easy enough to ridicule Hawkins' pronouncement in Pleas Of The Crown from a metaphysical point of view, the concept of the `` oneness '' of a married couple may reflect an abiding belief that the communion between husband and wife is such that their actions are not always to be regarded by the criminal law as if there were no marriage.

There is much truth in both these charges, and not many Bourbons deny them.

Poetry for a Persian is nothing less than truth and beauty.

To my knowledge, Lincoln remains the only Head of State and Commander-in-Chief who, while fighting a fearful war whose issue was in doubt, proved man enough to say this publicly -- to give his foe the benefit of the fact that in all human truth there is some error, and in all our error, some truth.

So great a man could not but understand, too, that the thing that moves men to sacrifice their lives is not the error of their thought, which their opponents see and attack, but the truth which the latter do not see -- any more than they see the error which mars the truth they themselves defend.

I suggested that one must let it in because it is the truth, but Beckett did not take to the word truth.

The central concern of Erich Auerbach's impressive volume called Mimesis is to describe the shift from a classic theory of imitation ( based upon a recognition of levels of truth ) to a Christian theory of imitation in which the levels are dissolved.

For this change is not a change from one positive position to another, but a change from order and truth to disorder and negation.

This, however, cannot be done by a community whose very experience of truth is confused and incoherent: it has no absolute standard, and consequently cannot distinguish the absolute from the contingent.

Its ontological status is itself most tenuous because apart from individual men, who are its `` matter '', tradition, the `` form '' of society exists only as a shared perception of truth.

And the direction of that movement is determined by his perception of the truth about himself.

And it would seem that history is a witness to this truth.

The basic truth in the reactionary response is to be found in its realistic assumption of the primacy of the real over the ideational.

But this truth is distorted by its extreme application: the assumption of the separate existence of tradition.

Whatever the psychological truth in the Oedipus myth, an Oedipus who is drawn to his fate by irresistible external forces can carry the symbol of humanity and its archaic crime, and the incest that is unknowing renews the mystery of the eternal dream of childhood and absorbs us in the secret.

But a modern Oedipus who is doomed because he cannot oppose his own childhood is only pathetic, and for renouncing the mystery in favor of psychological truth he gives up the claim on our sympathies.

Mann understood better than most men the incest comedy at the center of the myth and the psychological truth in which dread is shown as the other face as longing was for him just the kind of deep and complicated joke he liked to tell.

But however we come, finally, to explain and account for the present, the truth we are trying to expose, right now, is that the makers of constitutions and the designers of institutions find it difficult if not impossible to anticipate the behavior of the host of all their enterprises.

Its truth is illustrated by the skill, sensitivity, and general expertise of the English professor with whom one attends the theatre.

This truth that the moral law is natural has other important corollaries.

Nogaret is hardly an impartial witness, and even he did not make his charges against Boniface until the latter was dead, but there is some truth in what he said and more in what he did not say.