Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer and Huxley (Key Issues (Bristol, England), No. 4.)

Until the nineteenth century, thinkers who entertained doubts about the existence of God were branded ‘atheists’ and ‘infidels’, and were usually subject to persecution. In late nineteenth-century Britain, however, a group of highly respectable thinkers emerged who used widely-accepted premises concerning the limits of human knowledge and the need for intellectual modesty to argue for the radical conclusion that theology is impossible, that we humans cannot know what (if anything) lies behind the veil of appearances. This volume provides extracts from the writings of the best-known agnostics (Spencer, Huxley, Stephen, Clifford, and Tyndall), and their less well-known theological opponents. The debate marks a major turning-point in Western attitudes towards religious belief: the burden of proof is henceforth firmly placed on the shoulders of the theologians.