What are the characteristics of an agnostic's thinking?
One common way that people identify agnostics is in terms of how the agnostic thinks or behaves. A lot of people expect agnostics to be wishy-washy, fence-sitters, non-committal, unsure or uncertain, etc. But are these even accurate or fair characteristics? Are they necessary characteristics? In this response, I want to provide a list of necessary characteristics that we can expect agnostics to have. These are the characteristics that logically stem from the definition of agnosticism. A natural place to start is with how Huxley described agnosticism and how he applied it.
I'll go over some of the common characteristics that people tend to apply to agnostics and see if that goes with Huxley's thinking.
Is being a fence-sitter or noncommittal necessary characteristics for agnostics to have? An agnostic can accept or commit to views that are proven as indicated by following quote from Huxley's writings:
Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. - Huxley
And of course an agnostic can also choose to remain undecided or uncertain, but applying the above quotation, it's not the default position. The undecided position for agnostics would only apply when there is a lack of logic and evidence to take a side either way.
Open-mindedness? I would say yes because open-mindedness goes with being undogmatic. It's also one way how Huxley expressed his agnosticism as shown in the following:
That which is unproven today may be proven by the help of new discoveries to-morrow.
... And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction. Agnostics who never fail in carrying out their principles are, I am afraid, as rare as other people of whom the same consistency can be truthfully predicated. But, if you were to meet with such a phœnix and to tell him that you had discovered that two and two make five, he would patiently ask you to state your reasons for that conviction, and express his readiness to [247] agree with you if he found them satisfactory.
A key thing to notice is that Huxley is not advocating to be open-minded under any condition, as if you should just accept that anything is true. But nor should you be too skeptical as to think that only certain things can be true. You should be open enough to consider that anything can be true, no matter how far-fetched it sounds, but it is not accepted as truth unless there is valid logic and evidence for it or unless it is disproven.
Undogmatic? According to the following, agnostics are to be undogmatic by not placing full confidence in unproven views or ideologies:
Some twenty years ago, or thereabouts, I invented the word "Agnostic" to denote people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with the utmost confidence. - Huxley
A characteristic that Huxley brought up is that agnostics are "freethinkers". A freethinker is a person who forms their view on the basis of reason, and independent of authority, tradition, and commonly accepted or popular views.
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; 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 conclu[238]sion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.
So in conclusion, an agnostic should be a freethinker, undogmatic, open-minded, and scientific-minded. There may be more characteristics than the ones I listed, but you can tell the necessary ones from the unnecessary or even inaccurate ones by seeing if the characteristic in question fulfills the goal of being undogmatic or of being scientifically-minded by not placing certainty in unproven things. That is the standard of the agnostic principle.
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