In these remarks I do undertake one more time the attempt to answer the following question: what do agnostics really want? This issue is so complicated that even the agnostics themselves had great trouble in delivering the answer. This is also related to these agnostics, such as the recalled here Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen W. Hawking, who belong to the greatest format of scholars. The agnostics are being distanced from, both the atheists and theists. However they do judge differently their views it is important that as well the first as the latter ones may appreciate what stands behind agnosticism and this might be very variable.

Contrary to a widespread thesis about the non-cognitive character of religious beliefs, I argue that it is beneficial to highlight and not marginalize the place of religion in the epistemic sphere. At least some religious beliefs (especially theism) can be qualified as true or false. Holding them as true is usually based on the evidence which is not widely accepted. This, however, does not entail that these beliefs are not true. If they are true, then holding them to be true should be seen as rational, despite of the fact, that the supporting evidence does not seem to be strong in the light of current epistemic standards of justification. It does not mean, however, that such beliefs can be hold with the highest assertion if they evoke serious doubts. Changes in religious doctrines and religious pluralism do not constitute a sufficient reason for excluding religion from the epistemic sphere, as a similar situation concerns many academic disciplines, such as philosophy, or psychology.

This article discusses the main points in the Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston’s debate about the existence of God. Copleston defended the cosmological argument based on a sufficient reason and argued against radical contingency in explaining the origin of the world. During the debate, the understanding of necessity was discussed, whether the word ‘God’ is a proper name or a description, whether the universe as a whole can have a cause, and the arguments about the origin of the world formulated in modern physics. The whole debate is an excellent example of the difference between a theist and an atheist with regard to Leibnizian type of the cosmological argument.i

The paper summarizes the debate concerning the divine hiddenness argument. First, it presents two versions of the argument that was initially formulated by J.L. Schellenberg and subsequently discussed over the last twenty years and it marks its most important theses. Then the author indicates some possible rebuttals, segregating them according to the challenged premises. Particularly noteworthy, he argues, are these theistic answers that accuse the images of God assumed by the hiddenness argument of excessive anthropomorphism and those that try to point out higher goods justifying divine hiddenness. In conclusion the author claims that the hiddenness argument proves atheism only if by theism one understands theistic personalism. Other positions, such as ultimism or theism of transcendence, are not threatened by the argument.

Today, there is a growing sense of the need to abandon philosophy or theology in favour of science and the convictions of specialists. The analyses presented by Aristotle and St Thomas in terms of the hierarchy of intellectual virtues allow us to draw attention to the conditions and consequences of these demands. In their view, knowledge grows out of certain principles and presuppositions, the evaluation of which belongs to the virtue of wisdom. The virtue of wisdom has as its object the highest principles, the reaching of which requires special methodological and metaphysical attention. In the case of Christian theology, this wisdom is enriched by faith in what God reveals to man. Faith understood in this way goes beyond natural cognition while at the same time having a strong rational basis of a historical and doctrinal nature. Scientific knowledge devoid of metaphysical reflection, as well as methodically dissociating itself from religious faith, can lead to a lack of awareness of one’s own act of faith in relation to one’s own presuppositions. This can entail unconscious transformations of one’s own scientific assumptions into principles of a universal philosophical nature. This can consequently lead to a misjudgement of all that is beyond the competence and methodology of the sciences.