‘When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.’
The term “agnosticism” was first coined by Thomas Henry Huxley to describe a modest argument: that one cannot claim objective truth if one cannot produce adequate evidence. Agreeing with “agnosticism” was controversial during Huxley’s time for religious reasons and Huxley himself was involved in a controversy when agnostics were charged with being infidels. Huxley strongly disagreed with this and argued through various essays that agnostics were not infidels and that agnosticism was merely a method of thought. However, the agnostic method of thought did lead one to doubt some of the historical claims of Christianity and greatly influenced the development of religious agnosticism and atheism to this day.
Thomas Henry Huxley was a British biologist and educator. He was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his public support of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. He was also the grandfather of famous writer Aldous Huxley.