Comment by zargon
3 days ago
You’re mixing theism/atheism with gnosticism/agnosticism. They’re two separate axes.
> In practice, atheists are people who think they know there is no god.
This is generally labeled “gnostic atheism” or “strong atheism”, and only a teeny tiny fraction of people who identify as atheists take this view.
The way the vast majority of atheists use the term is as the complement set to theism. Theists believe in god(s). Atheists lack belief in gods. We don’t claim to know for certain, we just haven’t seen evidence that leads us to believe. (As you say, certainty level regarding any particular god varies depending on which one is in question.)
“Gnostic atheism” is a confusing choice of words because in the context of Christianity, "gnostic" already means something quite different:
>Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects. These diverse groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge above the teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
I shouldn’t have written that so it sounded like both terms were equal. “Strong atheism” became the established term. My understanding is that Huxley’s coining of the term “agnosticism” was based on Christian Gnosticism’s assertion of knowledge (and it’s in the Greek root). So due to the history it’s difficult to use lower-case gnostic in a more general sense. I guess I feel like it makes it easier to understand that agnosticism is orthogonal to theism/atheism. But I should have clarified that.