What's the difference between agnosticism and gnosticism?

Agnosticism


Definition:

  • (n.) That doctrine which, professing ignorance, neither asserts nor denies.
  • (n.) 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.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There can’t be something, someone that could fix this and chooses not to.” Years of agnosticism and an open attitude to religious beliefs thrust under the bus, acknowledging the shame that comes from sitting down with those the world forgot.
  • (2) Individually, they stood to declare their loyalty to the throne or to profess their monarchical agnosticism.
  • (3) Brexit: how a fringe idea took hold of the Tory party | Matthew d’Ancona Read more But Cameron was committed to a public position of agnosticism until the renegotiation was complete.
  • (4) I move for less censorship of "offensive" material, not more; more mocking of every religion and of atheism and its drippy twin, agnosticism, in front of which I plant my knee.
  • (5) To put it bluntly ‘doing something’ about global warming gathered strong political momentum in Australia.” Howard was full of praise for Tony Abbott for challenging what had “seemed to be the consensus” on the issue, saying – with a clear sense of approval – that Australians had now “settled into a state of sustained agnosticism … Of course the climate is changing.
  • (6) For years the population of US Catholics has gradually declined , according to researchers, in line with a broader trend of Americans walking away from religious institutions in favor of atheism, agnosticism and, especially, a category of “no affiliation”.
  • (7) Oddly, though, my gradual loss of faith and shift to agnosticism was counterbalanced with a growing appreciation for the positive source of meaning and empowerment that faith, spirituality, and collective religious practice can be in people's lives.
  • (8) AR: And in terms of the conflict between Darwin coming to a point of at least agnosticism from being religious, and Emma retaining her religion, how do you develop that sort of conflict between the two of you?
  • (9) The lessons on atheism, agnosticism and humanism for thousands of primary-school pupils in Ireland will be drawn up by Atheist Ireland and multi-denominational school provider Educate Together, in an education system that the Catholic church hierarchy has traditionally dominated.
  • (10) In Part I of this essay, I assess the fairness and cogency of three broad criticisms raised against 'principlism' as an approach: (1) that principlism, as an exercise in applied ethics, is insufficiently attentive to the dialectical relations between ethical theory and mortal practice; (2) that principlism fails to offer a systematic account of the principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice; and (3) that principlism, as a version of moral pluralism, is fatally flawed by its theoretical agnosticism.
  • (11) (My own beliefs tend to veer towards agnosticism, with a healthy side of Buddhism.)
  • (12) Church of England = 33% Catholicism = 10% Other Christian = 9% Islam = 3% Hinduism = 2% Judaism = 1% Other religion = 3% Agnosticism = 17% Atheism = 21% Do you actively practise your religion, eg you attend regular religious services?
  • (13) Despite his own agnosticism, the vernacular "sorrow songs" became the privileged vehicle for expressing "the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart" - the soul ofblack experience.
  • (14) Howard was forced to, at least temporarily, disavow his personal agnosticism by public opinion, which had been influenced by recent weather events.

Gnosticism


Definition:

  • (n.) The system of philosophy taught by the Gnostics.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At the same time there is a low activity in post-central and temporal "afferent" (sensory-gnostic) cortical areas.
  • (2) These documents were then compared with the 'Seven sermons', and numerous affinities noted between it and the Gnostic texts.
  • (3) The MRT expresses the degree of gnostic disturbances by means of a point system.
  • (4) "As a secularist with Gnostic proclivities," he writes, "and above all as a literary aesthete, I preach Bardolatry as the most benign of all religions."
  • (5) The authors describe gnostic rings, an additional technique, that is useful for clinical sensibility testing, as well as for sensory reeducation.
  • (6) Decisive syndromal points of view are: a) there is an absence of significant audiological deficiencies; b) errors of the acoustic-discriminative type prevail in auditory-visual matching tasks; c) the gnostic deficit is modality specific; d) the same items are variably reproduced on repeated presentation; e) there is marked fluctuation of performance; f) there is exceptional irreversibility of the impairment; g) amusia is a more or less obligatory accompanying phenomenon; h) in cases of vascular origin there is always a history of repeated temporal lobe damage, this damage being predominantly in the form of bilateral lesions.
  • (7) Inflow of potassium ions into the alga Hydrodictyon reticulatum is reduced in the dark, the reduction being accompanied by a change in the selectivity pattern with respect to alkali metal ions, observed in competition experiments and evaluated by the gnostic analysis as described by Kovanic.
  • (8) It is not enough to assume that because Jung chose the pseudonym of Basilides, he was necessarily Jung's primary Gnostic influence.
  • (9) Thus it becomes evident that there is epistemologically a fundamental difference between the so-called gnostic and the agnostic standpoint, between the psychoanalytical and the phenomenological approach.
  • (10) Findings of this study suggest that the connection between the gnostic units of expression and the gnostic units of verbal labeling is not impaired significantly among the dementia patients.
  • (11) Clinical features deviating from the usual pattern included: no psychosis, no measurable dementia, no dwarfism, no microcephaly, no (marked) involuntary movements, but conspicuous generalised muscle atrophy and denervation, impairment of vital and gnostic sensation, thoracolumbar vertebral anomalies, and aplasia of os coccygis.
  • (12) The cells of the highest stage eventually become "gnostic cells", whose response shows the final result of the pattern-recognition of the network.
  • (13) The results have been compared with 101 patients without consideration of all gnostic defects.
  • (14) However, the most important are signs which definitely correspond to the specificity of the lateralization of the gnostical functions.
  • (15) The main outcome of the experiments described in the paper is an idea on the gnostic cortical microset.
  • (16) Bloom, the "Jewish Gnostic heretic" and dedicated follower of Emerson, observes that "sublime literature demands an emotional not an economic investment", and, for himself, declares he is ready to submit, with reservations, to being described as "a theorist of the American Sublime".
  • (17) While there is no way of knowing precisely what Jung was thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons', it is clear that he was well acquainted not only with the work of Basilides, but also with the work of other Gnostic thinkers.
  • (18) Religious metaphors are rife in these conversations about bread, cheese and coffee – these everyday items have been elevated to gnostic mysteries.
  • (19) As Luria has noted, the gnostic disturbances associated with damages of the right hemisphere are "the remarkable absence of perception of the patient of his own defects; .
  • (20) It is shown that preservation of connections of cortical gnostic zones with verbal structures of the left hemisphere is the obligatory condition for consciousness functioning.