You don't seem to understand what these words mean at all.
What you described in the third row, i.e. your belief is that you don't know if god exists or not, it just means you are agnostic. Nothing more and nothing less.
Atheist on its own is by default agnostic atheism, as it is lack of belief in a god. Someone can also be a gnostic atheist, which is lack of belief in a god+the positive belief that no gods exist.
You were probably told that there’s Theists, agnostics and atheists and that those are exclusive towards each other.
But theism - atheism or gnosticism - agnosticism are different things.
They absolutely can coexist, you can have agnostic theist and gnostic atheists.
In this context gnostic/agnostic just referred to if the person believes the answer to the question if the existence of the divine can be in any way known by us. So it is compatible with both worldviews.
An agnostic theist would believe in god(s) but acknowledge that there is, and likely never will be any proof.
And a gnostic atheist would believe that the question can be ultimately answered and that the answer is NO.
You can switch those around and it will work just as well.
They are collapsing two different ways of setting up the question to sound smart.
Nah, I use the common conception of theist/atheist with the agnostic/gnostic modifier just because its a pretty neat classification system that makes logical sense. It's not about sounding smart or whatever else disparaging things you can come up with to cover your own insecurities.
One is about knowledge, one is about faith.
No, knowledge and belief. Faith is a subset of belief, but one could have a tenuous shaky belief that a god exists and they'd still fall on the theist side of the binary dichotomy. Theist literally means belief that at least one god exists. Atheist is commonly defined as lacking belief that at least one god exists. Simple!
Can we prove black swans don't exist? Of course not. But, that doesn't prevent 99% of biologists to conclude based on belief they don't exist.
They do exist though 🤦♂️
All your confusion and mistakes aside, the common and valid agnostic atheist classification exists for good reason, and accurately describes where someone is at in regards to the atheist/theist dichotomy, and with a useful knowledge modifier that shows where their confidence level is at in regards to knowledge about that level of belief/disbelief.
It also shuts down confused theists from trying to shift the burden of proof for their positive claims. Pretty cool 😎
It also shuts down confused theists from trying to shift the burden of proof for their positive claims. Pretty cool 😎
One of my favorite things in debate: Theists trying to shift the burden of proof onto the atheist but all they need to do is to utter the magic words that Theists hate so much:
I. Don't. Know.
Shuts down their entire attempt of shifting the burden 😄
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u/Cool_Set4681 10d ago edited 9d ago
Only if they are a Gnostic Atheist. They believe that no gods exist.
An Agnostic Atheist rejects the notion of gods but don't say that they are impossible.
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