RE: Strong/Gnostic Atheism and Weak/Agnostic Atheism
August 21, 2014 at 6:48 pm
(This post was last modified: August 21, 2014 at 6:52 pm by bennyboy.)
I think to be a gnostic anything, your terms need to be well defined. I'm a gnostic atheist about the Christian God, because the Biblical accounts carry contradictory descriptions, and logical impossibilities.
To be a gnostic atheist about any possible God, you still have to make semantic choices: "God must be said to be XYZ, and XYZ is incompatible with what we know about reality." In my case, I accept the loosest possible definition: "God is any sentient or intentional presence which has existed at least as long as the universe." To me, there's nothing that I know about that makes such an entity an impossibility-- although actually identifying and interacting with such an entity on a gnostic level seems highly unlikely.
Some have claimed that since I don't have an active belief that God (by some definition) is real, I'm not agnostic, but an agnostic atheist. I'll fight to the figurative death against this: I accept as plausible both that such an entity exists, and that such an entity does not exist. I do not "happen to lack" an active belief in a God's existence, much as I do not "lack" an active belief that my missing car keys are in my junk drawer: until I know, I just don't know.
To be a gnostic atheist about any possible God, you still have to make semantic choices: "God must be said to be XYZ, and XYZ is incompatible with what we know about reality." In my case, I accept the loosest possible definition: "God is any sentient or intentional presence which has existed at least as long as the universe." To me, there's nothing that I know about that makes such an entity an impossibility-- although actually identifying and interacting with such an entity on a gnostic level seems highly unlikely.
Some have claimed that since I don't have an active belief that God (by some definition) is real, I'm not agnostic, but an agnostic atheist. I'll fight to the figurative death against this: I accept as plausible both that such an entity exists, and that such an entity does not exist. I do not "happen to lack" an active belief in a God's existence, much as I do not "lack" an active belief that my missing car keys are in my junk drawer: until I know, I just don't know.
