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agnosticism - 4 dictionary results

ag⋅nos⋅ti⋅cism

  [ag-nos-tuh-siz-uhm]
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–noun
1. the doctrine or belief of an agnostic.
2. an intellectual doctrine or attitude affirming the uncertainty of all claims to ultimate knowledge.
Origin:
1870–75; agnostic + -ism
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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ag·nos·ti·cism   (āg-nŏs'tĭ-sĭz'əm)   
n.  
  1. The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.
  2. The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Agnosticism

Ag*nos"ti*cism\, n. That doctrine which, professing ignorance, neither asserts nor denies. Specifically: (Theol.) The doctrine that the existence of a personal Deity, an unseen world, etc., can be neither proved nor disproved, because of the necessary limits of the human mind (as sometimes charged upon Hamilton and Mansel), or because of the insufficiency of the evidence furnished by physical and physical data, to warrant a positive conclusion (as taught by the school of Herbert Spencer); -- opposed alike dogmatic skepticism and to dogmatic theism.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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agnosticism [(ag-nos-tuh-siz-uhm)]

A denial of knowledge about whether there is or is not a God. An agnostic insists that it is impossible to prove that there is no God and impossible to prove that there is one. (Compare atheism.)

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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