(July 13, 2009 at 3:48 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: What Arcanus proposed was that gnostic didn't mean 'know' but 'conclusively established' - more the 'certainty' that you were getting at for theists I believe Adrian, but more accurate. (Theists claim 'certainty' but you and I know this isn't a position of empirical knowledge. Don't you agree?)Ah yes, now I remember. I stated that I had not conclusively established that there was no god. I don't think that the case for the existence of a God has been established, ergo I don't believe in a God. However it is a fallacy to say that because existence has not been established, the subject does not exist, or even that it is conclusively established that the subject does not exist.
Equally then, this applies to atheists. You, I believe, have conclusively established that there is no god.
You don't know, you can't, in the same way that I can't know. I am a gnostic theist, you are a gnostic atheist.. by this measure.
@Rhizomorph13,
fr0d0 does indeed have the terms backwards, and I agree that the terms are unclearly defined. I would recommend reading up on the "gnostic" movement (Wikipedia might be a good start), and then read Thomas Huxley's original essay on Agnosticism.
This website explains Huxley's agnosticism, and the variants of agnostic atheist and agnostic theist: http://www.religioustolerance.org/agnostic.htm
