Aesthetics, Agnosticism, Atheism.

Aesthetics.

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy, which is the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. Aesthetics is closely associated with the philosophy of art.


Agnosticism.

Agnosticism means "unknowable," and is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims—particularly theological claims regarding metaphysics, afterlife or the existence of God, god(s), deities, or even ultimate reality—is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently unknowable due to the nature of subjective experience.

Agnostics claim either that it is not possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of God or gods; or, alternatively, that while individual certainty may be possible, they personally have no knowledge. Agnosticism in both cases involves some form of skepticism.

Demographic research services normally list agnostics in the same category as atheists and non-religious people, although this can be misleading depending on the number of agnostic theists who identify themselves first as agnostics and second as followers of a particular religion.

Enlightenment philosopher David Hume proved that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt. We fallible human beings cannot obtain absolute certainty except in trivial cases where a statement is true by definition (as in, "all bachelors are unmarried" or "all triangles have three sides"). All rational statements that assert a factual claim about the universe that begin "I believe that ...." are simply shorthand for, "Based on my knowledge, understanding, and interpretation of the prevailing evidence, I tentatively believe that...." For instance, when I say, "I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy," I'm not asserting an absolute truth but a tentative belief based on my interpretation of the assembled evidence. Even though I'll set my alarm clock tonight before retiring because "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow," even that belief is tentative, tempered by a small but finite degree of doubt (the sun might explode; the earth might be shattered in collision with a rogue asteroid or I might die and the sun will never rise for me).

In that light, what sets apart agnosticism from the general skepticism that permeates modern Western philosophy? First, the nature of god is the crux of the issue, not whether god merely exists. So the nature and attributes of god are of foremost concern, not whether he's merely "out there."

Agnosticism maintains that the nature and attributes of god are beyond the grasp of man's finite and limited mind; those divine attributes transcend human comprehension. The concept of God is just too big a subject to wrap our minds around. Humans might apply terms such as those found in the Catholic Encyclopedia that attempt to characterize god, terms such as "infinitely perfect spiritual substance," "omnipotent," "eternal," "incomprehensible," "infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection" but, the agnostic would assert, these terms only underscore the inadequacy of our mental equipment to understand so vast, ephemeral and elusive a concept.

Although some agnostics do not believe in god and are therefore, by definition, also atheists, agnosticism is not a different word for atheism. An agnostic may believe devoutly in god. In fact, many mainstream believers in the West embrace an agnostic creed. As noted above, for instance, Roman Catholic dogma about the nature of God contains many strictures of agnosticism. An agnostic who believes in God despairs of ever fully comprehending what it is he believes in. But some believing agnostics assert that that very absurdity strengthens their belief rather than weakens it.

Bertrand Russell's pamphlet, Why I Am Not a Christian, based on a speech delivered in 1927 and later included in a book of the same title, is considered a classic statement of agnosticism. The essay briefly lays out Russell’s objections to some of the arguments for the existence of God before discussing his moral objections to Christian teachings. He then calls upon his readers to "stand on their own two feet and look fair and square at the world," with a "fearless attitude and a free intelligence."

In 1939, Russell gave a lecture on The existence and nature of God, in which he characterized himself as an agnostic. He said:
The existence and nature of God is a subject of which I can discuss only half. If one arrives at a negative conclusion concerning the first part of the question, the second part of the question does not arise; and my position, as you may have gathered, is a negative one on this matter.

However, later in the same lecture, discussing modern non-anthropomorphic concepts of God, Russell states:
That sort of God is, I think, not one that can actually be disproved, as I think the omnipotent and benevolent creator can.

In Russell's 1947 pamphlet, Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? (subtitled A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas), he ruminates on the problem of what to call himself:
As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God.

On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

In his 1953 essay, What Is An Agnostic? Russell states:
An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time.

However, later in the essay, Russell says:
I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these events then produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least of the existence of some superhuman intelligence.

Note that he didn't say "supreme" or "supernatural" intelligence, as these terms are metaphysically loaded.


Atheism.

Atheism, as a philosophical view, is the position that either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism. When defined more broadly, atheism is the absence of belief in deities, alternatively called nontheism. Although atheists are commonly assumed to be irreligious, some religions, such as Buddhism, have been characterized as atheistic.

Many self-described atheists are skepticel of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities. Others argue for atheism on philosophical, social or historical grounds. Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.

The term atheism originated as a pejorative epithet applied to any person or belief in conflict with established religion. With the spread of freethought, scientific skepticism, and criticism of religion, the term began to gather a more specific meaning and was sometimes used as a self-description by atheists.

The claim that atheism requires faith or unproven assumptions is a common argument leveled against atheists of all stripes. In this form of argument, critics of atheism typically employ the term "faith" in the sense often employed by atheists themselves, meaning a "blind" or unwarranted belief. Faith, often taken to mean, "religious faith", does not inherently involve religion; i.e having faith in the colour of the sky, or the word of a weather-reporter is not religious.

At times, this argument consists of laying the burden of proof on atheism, or in the case of agnostics and weak atheists, laying it on both strong atheism and theism. However, laying the burden of proof on atheism may be difficult because it is impossible to prove a negative. While it might be theoretically possible to one day find reasonably persuasive evidence of the existence of a deity, it is impossible to find evidence of any thing's nonexistence. As such, arguments for strong atheism consist primarily of arguments against theism, which is in keeping with claims that atheism in general is only the lack of a belief rather than a belief itself. Some strong atheists argue that, since they see the burden of proof as being upon theism, they are under no obligation to offer arguments that seek to actively disprove theism. Instead, strong atheism is a default position, like disbelief in Santa Claus, that they feel ought to be held unless and until that burden of proof is shouldered. However, weak atheists and agnostics feel that neither theism nor strong atheism are a proper default position to be taken and hence labelling both theism's and strong atheism's calls for proof to be argumentum ad ignoratiam.

One atheistic response is to emphasize that (weak) atheism is a rejection or lack of belief, not a belief in itself. This argument is often summarized by reference to Don Hirschberg's famous saying, "calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color." Another atheistic response to this argument is to state that the word "faith" in this context, as asserted with respect to theist "belief" verses atheist "belief," means something very different in the two contexts. Faith can mean 'complete confidence in a person or plan, etc.' Faith can also mean 'Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence'. When a theist speaks of his faith, it is argued, he refers to the latter definitions. When he wishes to assert that "atheists have faith, too", the only definition that fits is the first, but his argument implies the latter definitions, nonetheless.

Some people have, in response to this argument, drawn the analogy of Russell's teapot.

Russell's teapot, sometimes called the Celestial Teapot, was an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove unfalsifiable claims of religions. In an article entitled "Is There a God?", commissioned (but never published) by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Russell said the following:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Axiology.

Axiology, is the study of value or quality. It is often thought to include ethics and aesthetics—philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value—and sometimes it is held to lay the groundwork for these fields, and thus to be similar to value theory and meta-ethics. The term was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but in recent decades, value theory has tended to replace it in discussions of the nature of value or goodness in general. One area in which research continues to be pursued is so-called formal axiology, or the attempt to lay out principles regarding value with mathematical rigor.

The term is also used sometimes in economics.