(July 28, 2016 at 1:19 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote:(July 28, 2016 at 12:38 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote: No, agnosticism involves a negative answer to question #2, not question #1.
Not knowing if any Gods exist equals lack of belief. That is a basic inference to make. Atheism concerns lack of belief. Therefore agnosticism is implicitly atheistic.
Claiming something as knowledge requires something more than a hunch. Belief does not. Many theists handle belief as an exercise in stubborn insistence that what one would like to believe is indeed true. Many anti-theists and strong atheists seem to exhibit the same habit of mind, albeit to the opposite end.
It is possible to recognize that one can't shake a belief even though one knows he cannot make a convincing case for it. I believe I can tell what my dogs are feeling at certain moments, but I wouldn't claim that as knowledge. And even when I say I know my wife loves me I recognize that as a belief but not something for which I can make a convincing case to others. My core values likewise come with beliefs I claim with or without making knowledge claims about them, even though I'm sure I can do as good a job justifying them as others can their's.
