Strong/Gnostic Atheism and Weak/Agnostic Atheism

[bennyboy]

But no one is a pure agnostic, if you don't possess knowledge at all you should be an apatheist, if you took the position of not believing in gods you have to possess a minimum of knowledge to make the choice - Complete agnosticism would be only the 50/50 almost impossible position.

As a declared agnostic, I disagree. There are many ways in which a person could be said not to know something. First of all, the brain works in parallel. It's possible for different parts of the brain to arrive at different conclusions, and for you to have some conscious awareness of them; there's no law that says any proposition has to be reducible down to a single answer in one's brain.

Second, people's awareness of semantic problems can manifest in an answer. If you ask my whether God exists, then unless I think all possible definitions of God necessarily represent a logical impossibility (a position I do not hold), then my answer is "I don't know (unless you can provide an adequate definition)."

Some atheists argue that if I don't have an active belief in God, I'm atheist, and this includes semantic undefinition. However, this is not true IMO. If someone asked "Do you believe in boobledyboo?" I wouldn't respond "No, I lack a belief in boobledyboo, so I'm a-booledyboo-ist." I'd say, "What does that word mean to you?" And until you answer, I'd say, "Since I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know what my position on it is/would be."

To me, that's agnosticism, pure and simple.