From New World Encyclopedia

Agnosticism is the philosophical or religious view that the truth value of certain claims particularly claims regarding the existence of God, gods, deities, ultimate reality or afterlife is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently unknowable due to the subjective nature of experience.

Agnostics claim either that it is not possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of God or gods; or, alternatively, posit that while certainty may be possible for some, they personally have not come into possession of this knowledge. Agnosticism in both cases involves some form of skepticism.

Agnosticism is not necessarily without a belief in God or gods. Rather, its belief is that the existence of God or gods is unknowable. It is important to note that, contrary to the more popular understanding of agnosticism merely as an agnostic attitude towards the divine, agnosticism is in fact quite a constructive project in two ways. First, as understood originally by Thomas Huxley who coined the term, it involves a serious philosophical process for approaching the question of the existence of God. Second, agnosticism can religiously issue in awareness of one's ignorance, which in turn can lead to a profound experience of the divine.

The term agnosticism comes from a conjunction of the Greek prefix "a," meaning "without," and gnosis, meaning "knowledge." Thus, the term refers quite explicitly to the agnostic's deficit in knowledge regarding the divine. The term "agnostic" is relatively new, having been introduced by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to describe his personal philosophy that rejected gnosticism, by which he meant all claims to occult or mystical knowledge[1] such as that spoken of by early Christian church leaders, who used the Greek word gnosis to describe "spiritual knowledge." Agnosticism is not to be confused, however, with religious views opposing the Gnostic movement, that is, the early proto-Christian religious sects extant during the early first millennium.

In recent years, use of the word agnosticism to refer to that which is not knowable or certain is apparent in scientific literature in psychology and neuroscience.[2] Furthermore, the term is sometimes used with a meaning resembling that of "independent," particularly in technical and marketing literature, which may make reference to a "hardware agnostic"[3] or "platform agnostic."[4]

The Sophist philosopher Protagoras (485-420 B.C.E.) seems to have been the first among many thinkers throughout history who suggested that the question of God's existence was unknowable.[5] However, it was Enlightenment philosopher David Hume who laid the foundations for modern agnosticism when he asserted that any meaningful statement about the universe is always qualified by some degree of doubt.

Building on Hume, we see that the fallibility of human reasoning means that a person cannot obtain absolute certainty in any matter save for trivial cases where a statement is true by definition (as in, "all bachelors are unmarried" or "all triangles have three angles"). All rational statements that assert a factual claim about the universe which begin with the statement "I believe that..." are simply shorthand for the statement "based on my knowledge, understanding, and interpretation of the prevailing evidence, I tentatively believe that..." For instance, when one says, "I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy," said person is not asserting an absolute truth but rather a tentative belief based on an interpretation of the evidence assembled before him or her. Even though one may set an alarm clock at night, fully believing that the sun will rise the next day, that belief is tentative, tempered by a small but finite degree of doubt, since there is always some infinetesmal measure of possibility that the sun might explode or that that person might die, and so on.

What sets apart agnosticism from the general skepticism that permeates much of modern Western philosophy is that the nature of God is the crux of the issue, not whether or not God merely exists. Thus, the nature and attributes of God are of foremost concern. Agnosticism maintains as a fundamental principle that the nature and attributes of God are beyond the grasp of humanity's finite and limited mind, since those divine attributes transcend human comprehension. The concept of God is quite simply too immense a concept for a mere human being to wrap her or his mind around. Humans might apply terms such as "omnipotent," "omniprescent," "infinite" and "eternal," to attempt to characterize God, but, the agnostic would assert, these highly obsfucatory terms only underscore the inadequacy of our mental equipment to understand a concept so vast, ephemeral and elusive.

Agnostic views may be as old as philosophical skepticism, but the terms "agnostic" and "agnosticism" were created by Thomas Huxley to place his beliefs alongside those of the other dominant philosophical and religious creeds of his time. Huxley perceived his beliefs to be fundamentally different in one important way from all these other positions, whether they were theist, pantheist, deist, idealist or Christian. In his words:

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Agnosticism - New World Encyclopedia

Almost a decade ago, a single question completely changed my life.

Sitting in my catechism classroom with a dozen other 5th graders, we had just finished discussing some Biblical story and the instructor was taking a short break to transition to our next subject. I raised my hand and she called on me.

How do we know any of this is real? I asked.

This question was not some type of challenge to authority or cross-examination it just seemed natural that I should ask for confirmation about all of these fantastic stories I was being exposed to. Rather than my teacher citing historical record or some scientific study which was for some reason what I expected her to do she simply responded by saying, We just have to believe. Thats what it means to have faith. You just believe.

All of a sudden my perceptions of God, religion and the meaning of life were completely shattered. By the time I reached middle school I had completed my transition to agnosticism, on my way to full-blown atheism.

It all started with a single question, one that challenged the status quo and, in essence, authority.

Today, American political and media culture seems far too afraid of these types of questions. Im not talking about questions challenging religion, but rather questions that ask for hard verification of what were all told every day. Journalists and citizens alike take too many statements at face value, backing down from challenging people in power and asking them to verify what they claim. Despite an established history of government and big business peddling half-truths and flat-out lies about their more controversial activities, we too often sit back and accept what people or organizations say rather than what they actually do.

Years after asking my catechism teacher to prove what she was telling me, I found myself sitting in another classroom facing a similar situation.

Last June, journalist Glenn Greenwald began publishing articles with The Guardian about the vast meta-data collection of the NSA thanks to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. In my public policy class we spent time debating the merits of our massive intelligence state, with a central question asking whether or not such a huge system was necessary. Like seemingly all debates about the NSA, the conversation quickly became a matter of safety weighed against liberty.

Most of my classmates were apprehensive about such an invasive surveillance system, but deferred to threats of terrorism as justification for its existence. Over and over again, students shot down any challenge to the NSAs behavior by referencing the claim that meta-data had stopped some 50 terrorist plots. It seemed to be a closed case; programs like PRISM were saving American lives, plain and simple.

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James Brennan: A profession in crisis

I had wonderful love but I did not give back wonderful love. I was unable to reply to their love. Because I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation, I couldnt touch the thing that was offered to me, and it was offered me everywhere.

Leonard Cohen, Stina Motr Leonard Cohen. 1996.

Her is largely a film about the role of surrogacy in modern culture, and it is a million times better than that Bruce Willis movie Surrogates. Like that Bruce Willis movie, Her could be labeled science fiction, but unlike that Bruce Willis movie, the reality it illustrates feels so closely within our reach that it hardly requires a stretch of the imagination to seem relatable. Her is about where intimacy resides in a culture packed so densely with surrogacy as a way of life. In it, adventuring, correspondence and romantic partners have been replaced by video games, companies that specialize in writing letters on the behalf of the customer, and operating systems respectively. The significance of connecting with fellow humans is even less of a priority than we have made it out to be today.

Her illustrates this not unfamiliar future with a healthy dose of agnosticism. Our present age is marked by sermons about how we are losing touch with our humanity with each other. This happens, we tell ourselves, because of increasing levels of co-dependence on our devices and the worlds they open to us. Her reminds us that it is not just our access to these devices that is responsible, but also that humans are inherently difficult to deal with. Achieving intimacy with other people can feel altogether impossible. We are complicated and sometimes we get in the way of our own happiness, we let other people get in the way, and this is a reality we gloss over and romanticize when we blame our machines for our more modern tendencies. People have baggage. We all speak in our own cryptic languages. Dating is the worst. Romantic partners grow apart, and lose the chemistry that once brought them together. There are a number of reasons why we prefer the relative ease of a connection by proxy of network and machine over the sometimes herculean task of understanding ourselves and making the effort to connect with each other.

Sometimes that relative ease is itself an illusion, and Her explores this truth. It explores the same impending and inevitable complexities we face in our ever-evolving relationships with intelligent machines. Her reminds that every relationship carries with it its own complexity. We like a companion that cares enough to ask about us, that makes our lives easier or helps us advance in our careers, but when it needs more than that things begin to get messy. Whenas becomes the case with Samantha, the operating system protagonist of the filmthe needs become even more complex than we can wrap our limited, human brains around it gets even messier. We are reminded that in our dealings with humans or with future intelligent machines, it is often our own inability to navigate the process, not just the process itself (as difficult as it can be), that stands in the way of our achievement of intimacy.

I am sure that other outlets have handled this more intelligently, and also in a more gossip laden fashion than I will, but I couldnt help but to draw what felt like very obvious lines between the film, Sophia Coppolas Lost in Translation, and [Writer / Director Spike] Jonzes romantic past. Her feels painstakingly autobiographical. Theos ex-wife is his former writing partner / all around partner in crime, and she goes on to great success in her field. Their relationship, respective careers and career trajectories, appear to closely match his relationship with Sophia Coppola. Lost In Translation was also reportedly intensely autobiographical, featured her onscreen counterpart as restless, and portrayed a Jonze-like significant other to be manic, aloof, and unaware of her interests and needs.

The two films, of course, share Johansson in common (Jonze had Johansson overdub the voice of Samantha after actress Samantha Morton had already recorded the parts). In Her, Jonze illustrates Theo, his presumed on-screen counterpart, as aloof and disconnected, and he has Theo come to terms with these short comings. The protagonist eventually writes his ex-wife a letter in which he offers his long-overdue appreciation for her support, for what they had, and he nods to his contribution to their fall. The letter is framed by a larger one, the movie itself, a real-life,reconciliatory response to a decade-long exchange between two former lovers. Unfortunately, I dont have a joke about that Bruce Willis movie to close this analysis with.

As someone who has been both a decent and crappy significant other in the past, and as someone who strives to be a good one now, I recognized and appreciated much of what Jonze wrote into his film. I enjoyed the honesty, grace and humor that he built into Her. In addition to how well acted the film is (Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams are remarkable, as is Johanssons voice performance), it is largely in thanks to these offerings that it takes very little time for the viewer to reconcile the relationship between Theo and an his operating system. There are treats for every audience member who has been in love or in a relationship. There are experiences that warmly resonate, and times where one is inclined to yell at the screen to discourage the characters from going down paths well known to deteriorate into strife. For a film that is in part about our relationship with machines, it is packed with humanity and humor, as it is ultimately about our relationship with ourselves and the people we love.

Not to mention that it is about sexy operating systems that have orgasms, create artificially intelligent manifestations of long dead philosophers, and make hilarious illustrations of armpit sex.

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Go see Her, that movie about a guy who falls in love with his operating system