Listed here are persons who have identified themselves as theologically agnostic. Also included are individuals who have expressed the view that the veracity of a god's existence is unknown or inherently unknowable.
List
Activists and authors Saul Alinsky (1909–1972): American community organizer and writer; Rules for Radicals. Poul Anderson (1926–2001): American science fiction author. Piers Anthony (born 1934): English-American writer of science fiction and fantasy. Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906): American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States; co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President. Hannah Arendt (1906–1975): German American writer and political theorist.. Margaret Atwood (born 1939): Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Samuel Beckett (1906–1989): Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet; awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969."They were both agnostics, though both set a high associative value on the language in which the traditional religions of their forebears had been expressed, and in conversation and writing were not averse to ironic reference to certain metaphysical concepts." Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: the last modernist (1999), page 90 Ambrose Bierce (1842 – c. 1914): American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist; known for his short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and his satirical lexicon The Devil's Dictionary."Contrary to McWilliams's claim, however, in the public arena Bierce was not merely an agnostic but a staunch unbeliever regarding the question of Jesus' divinity." Donald T. Blume, Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and soldiers in context: a critical study, page 323. Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986): Argentine writer. "Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger more fantastic kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant." Henry Cadbury (1883–1974): American biblical scholar and Quaker who contributed to the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.Henry Cadbury, "My Personal Religion" , republished on the Quaker Universalist Fellowship website.Henry Cadbury stated in a 1936 lecture to Harvard Divinity School students: "Most students... wish to know whether I believe in the existence of God on immortality, and if so why. They regard it impossible to leave these matters unsettled – or at least extremely detrimental to religion not to have the basis of such conviction. Now for my pa, rt I do not find it impossible to leave them op..... I can describe myself as no ardent theist or atheist." Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881): Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era."I have recently argued that this linguistic indeterminacy, or as J. Hillis Miller terms it, undecidability, places Carlyle as a perhaps unwilling and yet important contributor to the upsurge of aanti-religiousus agnosticism that would set in motion the demise of orthodox belief both prophesied and dreaded by Nietzsche." Paul E. Kerry, Marylu Hill, Thomas Carlyle Resartus: Reappraising Carlye's Contribution to the Philosophy of History, Political Theory, and Cultural Criticism (2010), page 69. Ariel Dorfman (born 1942): Argentine/Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930): Scottish physician and writer; known for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes; a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963): American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor; co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909."To be clear, in all the annals of American and African American history, one will probably not find another agnostic as preoccupied with and as familiar with so much biblical, religious, and spiritual rhetoric as WEB Du Bois." Brian Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism, 1868–1934, page 3. Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955): American New Testament scholar and "a happy agnostic". Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883): English poet and writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Betty Friedan (1921–2006): American writer, activist and feminist; a leading figure in the women's movement in the United States; her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the 20th century."To be sure, when she wrote her groundbreaking book, Friedan considered herself an "agnostic" Jew, unaffiliated with any religious branch or institution." Kirsten Fermaglich, American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957–1965 (2007), page 59. Frederick James Furnivall (1825–1910): English second editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. John Galsworthy (1867–1933): English novelist and playwright; The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter; won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932 Neil Gaiman (born 1960): English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films including the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. Maxim Gorky (1868–1936): Russian and Soviet author who brought Socialist Realism to literature."...Gorky – a religious agnostic praised as a social realist by the communist regime during the demise of imperial Russia..." James Redmond, Drama and Philosophy, p. 161."Gorky had long rejected all organized religions. Yet he was not a materialist, and thus he could not be satisfied with Marx's ideas on religion. When asked to express his views about religion in a questionnaire sent by the French journal Mercure de France on April 15, 1907, Gorky replied that he was opposed to the existing religions of Moses, Christ, and Mohammed. He defined religious feeling as an awareness of a harmonious link that joins man to the universe and as an aspiration for synthesis, inherent in every individual." Tova Yedlin, Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography, p. 86. Thomas Hardy (1840–1928): English novelist and poet; while his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. Sadegh Hedayat (1903–1951): Iranian author and writer. Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988): American science fiction writer. Joseph Heller (1923–1999): American satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright; Catch-22. Alexander Herzen (1812–1870): Russian writer and thinker; the "father of Russian socialism"; one of the main fathers of agrarian populism. Aldous Huxley (1894–1963): English writer of novels, such as Brave New World, and wide-ranging essays. A.J. Jacobs (born 1968): American author.During an interview on his book The Year of Living Biblically with George Stroumboulopoulos on the CBC Program 'The Hour' Jacobs states "I'm still an agnostic, I don't know whether there's a god." James Joyce (1882–1941): Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde movement of the early 20th century; best known for his novel Ulysses." Neither Joyce's agnosticism nor his sexual libertinism were known to his mentors at Belvedere and he remained to the end a Prefect of the Sodality of Mary." Bruce Stewart, James Joyce (2007), p. 14. Franz Kafka (1883–1924): Czech-born Jewish writer."Kafka did not look at writing as a "gift" in the traditional sense. If anything, he considered both his talent for writing and what he produced as a writer curses for some unknown sin. Since Kafka was agnostic or even an atheist, it is best to assume his sense of sin and curse were metaphors." Franz Kafka – The Absurdity of Everything , Tamer i.com."Kafka was also alienated from his heritage by his parents' perfunctory religious practice and minimal social formality in the Jewish community, though his style and influences were sometimes attributed to Jewisfolklorere. Kafka eventually declared himself a socialist atheistand, Spinoza, Darwin and Nietzsche e some of his influences." C. D. Merriman, Franz Kafka . John Keats (1795–1821): English Romantic poet."Keats shared Hunt's dislike of institutionalized Christianity, parsons, and the Christian belief in man's innate corruption, but, as an unassertive agnostic, held well short of Shelley's avowed atheism." John Barnard, John Keats, pp. 38–39. Janusz Korczak (1878 or 1879–1942): Polish Jewish educator, children's author and pediatrician. After spending many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw, Korczak refused freedom and remained with the orphans as they were sent to Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion Warsaw of 1942. Stanisław Lem (1921–2006): Polish science fiction novelist and essayist. H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937): American writer of strange fiction and horror. Lucretius (99 BC–55 BC): Roman poet and philosopher."Lucretius did not deny the existence of gods either, but he felt that human ideas about gods combined with the fear of death make human beings unhappy. He followed the same materialist lines as Epicurus, and by denying that the gods had any way of influencing our world he said that humankind not needed to fear the supernatural." Ancient Atheists . BBC. Bernard Malamud (1914–1986): American author of novels and short stories; one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. H. L. Mencken (1880–1956): German-American journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore"."When asked what he would do if on his death he found himself facing the twelve apostles, the agnostic Mencken answered, "I would simply say, 'Gentlemen, I was mistaken." American Experience; Monkey Trial; People & Events: The Jazz Age, PBS, 1999–2001. Retrieved 28 July 2007. Thomas Mann (1875–1955): German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977): Russian novelist, poet and short story writer; known for his novel Lolita."Nabokov is a self-affirmed agnostic in matters religious, political, and philosophical." Donald E. Morton, Vladimir Nabokov (1974), p. 8. Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953), American playwright; won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936."O'Neill, an agnostic ann anarchist, maintained little hope in religion or politics and saw institutions not serving to preserve liberty but standing in the way of the birth of true freedom." John P. Diggins, Eugene O'Neill's America: desire under democracy (2007), p. 130. Larry Niven (born 1938): American science fiction author; Ringworld (1970). Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935): Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in Portuguese.