(January 24, 2019 at 2:14 pm)Acrobat Wrote: Most people here would classify as agnostic under the traditional labels, but they seem to want to wear those red A lapels so bad, that they're eager to define themselves as agnostic atheist, kind of like atheist theist.
In the older usage, agnostic connotes somebody who has either not considered the question seriously or who has no opinion or who has a 50/50 view on it. That would mischaracterize my position and that of many others. Although I don't claim to know with certainty that no god exists, I do not believe that one does which makes "atheist" a better choice.
Under the newer usage, I usually label myself as an agnostic atheist because that is as close as I can come to a succinct yet acceptably accurate approximation of my position:
I am confident that the god of the bible does not exist and is no different than Shiva, Ra, Odin, Zeus, or any of the thousands of other gods people have believed in. If and when somebody provides compelling evidence to the contrary I will re-evaluate it but many years of reviewing all arguments provided so far has led me to the conclusion that it is all nonsense. Regarding this narrower question I am effectively a gnostic atheist.
Beyond that, I find no reason to believe that ANY god exists or even that such a thing is possible but I am open to evidence of something, somewhere that qualifies for the label "god". Regarding the broader question I'm an agnostic atheist.
In my experience, using atheist/agnostic/theist divides people into 3 buckets with the middle one being rather small and the other two very broad while using agnostic/agnostic and atheist/theist pairs divides people into 4 more equal buckets and requires less explanation to understand the basic position. The newer usage seems to me to be more useful because of that and I'm hoping that it becomes the defacto default usage even among theists so I try to use it as much as possible.
All that said, the important thing is not which set of definitions are used as long as everybody in the conversation understands how they are being used. If I'm talking to somebody who insists that only the older usage is valid then I will use that. Language is sometimes an inexact tool for pinning down concepts and anybody insisting that only one usage is correct is going to waste a lot of time arguing over nothing. I'd rather get to the substance of the debate than worry about the fluff.
