p. 8 | Agnosticism by R.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 2, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 22.

Agnosticism

By R.

AGNOSTICISM is the science of knowing what not to know; but it is inconsistent enough to attempt to point out, not only the unknown, but also that which is unknowable. Now, it appears to us that, if a thing is unknown to an agnostic, it is very unwise and very much against his don't-know creed to claim so much as to know that anything he doesn't know is unknowable. But this is exactly what some of them claim. Spencer, for example, has told us that “the power which the universe manifests to us is inscrutable.”

How does he know that it is inscrutable? If a thing is unknown to a man, out of his ignorance he can assert only that the thing is unknown; he has not enough knowledge to assert that it is unknowable. And if he knows enough about it to know that it is unknowable, then he already knows that much about it, and by that much at least it is knowable, it ceases to be unknowable.

If the agnostic would stick to his creed of I-don't-know, he would be at least consistent with that creed; but when he tells us that he knows that things can not be known, he gets outside of his creed and makes himself ridiculous.

The agnostic trumpets his own ignorance of spiritual things. He confesses his spiritual numbness, and the Christian never misses the mark farther than when he refuses this testimony of the agnostic. When the agnostic tells us he is deaf, blind, dumb, torpid, and dead to the spiritual world, we must believe him. It is the word of God Himself. The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. Except a man be born anew, he can not even see the kingdom. “The nescience of the agnostic philosophy is the proof from experience that to be carnally minded is death.” The agnostic may not be a monster, but spiritually he is certainly a dwarf.