agnosticism

English biologist and essayist, Thomas Huxley. A leading advocate of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, Huxley combined his philosophical ideas with scientific exposition. He wrote essays from an ‘agnostic’ viewpoint (a term he introduced) and held that scientific discoveries had neither given support to, nor discredited, religious faith.

Belief that the existence of God cannot be proven; that in the nature of things the individual cannot know anything of what lies behind or beyond the world of natural phenomena. The term was coined in 1869 by T H Huxley.

Whereas an atheist (see atheism) denies the existence of God or gods, an agnostic asserts that God or a First Cause is one of those concepts (others include the Absolute, infinity, eternity, and immortality) that lie beyond the reach of human intelligence, and therefore can be neither confirmed nor denied.