RE: Atheism's Definition - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
December 3, 2011 at 12:09 pm
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2011 at 12:36 pm by lucent.)
(December 3, 2011 at 11:38 am)LastPoet Wrote: Gnosticism and agnosticism regards knowledge i.e. if its possible to know if god exists. Gnostics claim its possible to know that a god may or may not exists, while agnostics reject that claim. Atheism is the same regarding theism, but a question of belief. You, as a christian are a gnostic theist, you claim its possible to know god and it exists. I am an agnostic atheist, I reject the claim that its possible to know of god and reject claim that it exists. If I were a gnostic atheist you'd be right, I'd have the burden of proof to show how I know that no god exists. The most of the people here are agnostic atheists, some are gnostic, and you'd get no argument from them regarding that they have the burden of proof.
That is *not* what gnosticism is. You don't get to make up definitions for what gnosticism means simply because it appears to be an opposite to agnositicm. Gnosticism is in fact Christian mysticism and has nothing to do with knowledge about whether God can be known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
Agnosticism has a few definitions and one of them is that you simply don't know, and it has nothing to do with whether you could know or not.
This idea you have about "gnostic" and "agnostic" atheists is logically incoherent If you reject the idea that you can know God exists, then you also reject the idea that you can know if he doesn't exist. You cannot therefore also believe He doesn't exist.
(December 3, 2011 at 11:43 am)Ace Otana Wrote:(December 3, 2011 at 11:27 am)lucent Wrote: As a former agnostic, I know what agnosticism is. There is no such thing as an agnostic atheist. An agnostic says he doesn't know, which means he neither believes or disbelieves. An atheist says he doesnt believe. They are mutually exclusive. To say you are both is logically absurd. You're actually just an atheist who is intellectually honest enough to say that you couldn't really know, but refuses to take that belief to its logical conclusion and abandon your atheism.
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in god, I'm an agnostic because I don't know whether there is a god or not. It's not hard to grasp. It's not difficult to understand. Also, disbelieve/lack of belief/no belief is pretty much all the same thing. I don't believe in god, just as I don't believe in Santa. I'm not claiming anything.
Agnosticism and Atheism are not mutually exclusive. I'm both. I don't know whether there is a god or not (agnostic) but at the same time I'm unconvinced that such a being exists (atheist). Get it now?
Gnosticism and Agnosticism are based on knowledge. Theism and Atheism is based on belief/lack of.
You're right..it's not hard to grasp:
Agnosticism: You neither believe or disbelieve in God
Atheism: You disbelieve in God
You can't be both. You try to resolve the contradiction by saying atheism is a lack of belief, but as we've already discussed, atheism is the belief that God does not exist. You basically have to murder logic to hold this belief.
Your problem I think is that you can't separate the question of God from religion. I think the reality is, you are agnostic to a deistic God, and you don't believe what religion says. Disbelieving in religion doesn't make you an atheist. Whether God exists or not is a separate question from whether any particular religion is true.
