Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, or the divine, or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. It was first used by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 to describe his philosophy, which rejects all claims of spiritual or mystical knowledge. In the most general use of the term, agnosticism is the view that we do not know whether there is a God or not. Properly considered, agnosticism is not a third alternative to theism and atheism because it is concerned with a different aspect of religious belief. Theism and atheism refer to the presence or absence of belief in a god; agnosticism refers to the impossibility of knowledge with regard to a god or supernatural being. The term agnostic does not, in itself, indicate whether or not one believes in a god. Agnosticism can be either theistic or atheistic
. In a more general sense, agnostic can also refer to a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic
. In an IT context, agnostic refers to something that is generalized so that it is interoperable among various systems, such as software and hardware, as well as business processes or practices
