What the devil is a "gnostic atheist"?

[Doubting_Thomas]

I wish people didn't use it but that's not a battle I can win.

Why would you wish that? I appreciate that the terminology may tend towards confusion for people not in the group, i.e. outside the discussion, but then many people don't understand the distinction between hypothesis and theory either. The terms agnostic/gnostic and atheist/theist act to complement each other; the former denotes what a person purports to know, the latter what they believe. That a sect of a particular religion chose to adopt the term gnostic to describe themselves is really neither here nor there.

My core objections are per my post.

Re Gnosticism & Gnostics, the term was in use from at least around 200AD so the sect(s) got there long before anyone coined Atheism (1400 years after gnostic) let alone "gnostic atheist". At the time Huxley coined "agnostic", "gnostic" only referred to the early Christian type.

Gnosticism is really interesting and relevant to discussion of Judeo-Christian religion, particularly how the bible and doctrine was formed and changed. I haven't read as much on this as I'd like, but recommend it to anyone wishing to poke further holes in biblical inerrancy.

Gnostic related sources:
http://gnosis.org/library/dss/dss.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
http://gnosticschristians.com/ / http://www.gnosticchristianity.com/ <<less academic, more agendered but curious reading