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Quote:
agnostic noun. a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from a- 1 [not] + gnostic
I am agnostic. But how did this word come about? Etymology-wise, it means I am not a believer in a prominent heretical movement of the 2nd-century.
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Carpal Tunnel
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from Mr. Huxley: "I ... invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic,' ... antithetic to the 'Gnostic' of Church history who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant." [T.H. Huxley, "Science and Christian Tradition," 1889] from no huckster he.
formerly known as etaoin...
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I can't access the above link so pardon if this is redundant.
I had always understood the etymology of agnostic to be along the lines of: a- = without as in amoral or atypical, and gnosis = knowledge, as in prognosis (literally, foreknowledge).
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Carpal Tunnel
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formerly known as etaoin...
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