As usual, given enough time, people will dumb down a concept to such an extent that it will come to bear no resemblance to its original concept — and often come to mean the exact opposite of its original.
Consider “agnostic”. If you care to look the word up in the dictionary (www.dictionary.com) you’ll find definitions of the following sort:
- a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as god, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
- a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
Agnostic comes from the Greek ágnōst(os), variant of ágnōtos not known, incapable of being known.
However, if you ask pretty much anyone, anywhere, what the word agnostic means they will tell you: “Dem agnostic guys are some sort of low life scum that doubts whether or not god exists.”
A true agnostic — someone that is familiar with the original intention of the term and tries to follows its premise — would never suggest that they doubt the existence of god. In fact quite the contrary. They would tell you that they do not have sufficient personal experience to even hint at such an outlandish thing presumption.
An agnostic is not the kind of person to suggest that just because they have not personally met Mr. God in the lobby of the railway that no such person could exist. They might suggest that they have severe doubts whether it is possible for them to determine the existence or non-existence of God.
If a Mr. God shows up, a true agnostic might be the first in line to shake her hand — how better to test the validity of the proposition?