Gnostic Atheism? WTF?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Because you don't really know them, do you? You believe in them without absolute certainty (in other words, you have faith those things are true), but, if they can be proven false, you never really knew them. I mean, you knew the concepts, but not the reality.

Not so. Firstly, faith is not simply belief; faith is belief in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contravening evidence. I have no faith. I'm sure I won't float away from the ground not because I have faith in gravity, but because long years of experience lead me to know that gravity sucks.

As for "if they can be proven false", the fact is that it is still knowledge in the sense of my mental outlook until that point, in the same manner that Newtonian physics was thought to be completely explanatory until it was found to suffer distortions when exposed to extreme conditions. It was, and is, still knowledge, as are Einsteinian physics, even though our knowledge of Newton's physics was changed by Einstein's insights.

What's your basis for that acceptance? Experience. Experience that can't be objectively verified without being filtered by your flawed brain. You can't prove anything if you set your standards as high as you have set them for the existence of deities.

... which is exactly why I wrote that I regard existence as axiomatic, meaning that we start with the assumption that we exist, but are willing to overthrow that axiom if we can find evidence which disproves it. Of course, if I don't exist, I can't really think about it, now can I?

It is the logical conclusion of your standards for the existence of deities. It's a double-standard, which is what I'm trying to show you.

No, the logical conclusion of my standard of proof for deities is that knowledge is tentative. Anything else is imputing onto me a belief I don't hold.

I'm not familiar with that expression.

It's a snippet from a song that was a hit here a couple of decades ago.

You adhere to the viewpoint that, to disprove something, you need to have absolute, objective knowledge of all of reality. This is a ridiculous standard.

That depends on the object of proof or disproof. If we're trying to disprove the existence of the dog on your lap, then sure, you have a point.

However, when we're discussing concepts as grand as deities --and their reputed powers of omnipresence etc -- then yes, being able to examine the entire Universe is needed for disproof in the pure sense of that word.

Either that or you think that absence of evidence after tens of thousands of years isn't evidence of absence, which is just as ridiculous of a standard.

This is a false dichotomy, for the reasoning I've given above. I hold to neither view you're trying to impute upon me, and that renders your argument another swat at a strawman.

I think knowkedge and epistemology are much more subtly nuanced issues than you do, it seems. I'm not really interested in changing your mind, though.