Gnostic Atheism? WTF?

[One Above All]

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.

I'll assume that by "sucks" you mean "pulls stuff in the direction of other stuff".
Anyway, as I explain later on, when you set your standards for everything as high as you do for the existence of gods, you must have faith in everything, including gravity.

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.

Like I said, you knew the concepts (maybe), but not the reality. The thing is that you believe those concepts to reflect the reality of things. Newtonian physics is wrong, or, at best, incomplete. So is Einstein's. Everything in science is incomplete, because we don't have absolute knowledge.

... 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?

In other words, you have faith in existence, since you can't prove it. Thanks for playing.

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.

Then your definition of "knowledge" must be as loose as a christian's definition of "love".

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.

So you admit you have double standards for evidence. Again, thanks for playing.

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.

The point is not to create a strawman. The point is to show you that double standards of evidence are stupid to have.

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.

In that case, consider this discussion to be over.