When Atheists Can't Think Episode 1: No Evidence for God?

[downbeatplumb]

Being at agnostic and being an atheist aren't necessarily two separate things.

I think they are. And the broader world of intellectual inquiry believes they are.

The only people who think you can be an agnostic atheist are the internet atheist community and the New Atheism that gave birth to them. They do this because they derive their ideas of atheism from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who are polemical and not informed about the philosophical work undergirding an intellectually-driven atheism and agnosticism.

One of the benefits of combining the two is purely tactical: You get to taken on the weaker burden of proof of agnosticism, while still holding on to the label of atheism. 

I realize this takes the discussion in a slightly different direction, but I think it's worth discussing. For the perils of the New Atheism and their intellectual bankruptcy, see the article linked in my signature.

Didn't realise they had the interwebz in 1887..

One of the earliest definitions of agnostic atheism is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887–1888 (published in 1903 under the title Agnosticism). The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one.[4] If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist... if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist – an agnostic-atheist – an atheist because an agnostic... while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other...[4]