Atheism and Agnosticism

Sorry, but the next scientology post will be coming up on Tuesday. This is a bonus article beacuse I felt like popping another one up. That being said, Tuesday's post will be a lot of fun and will be rather shocking to a few people I think.

Anyways, I wanted to touch upon the terms atheist, theist, gnostic and agnostic.

There is a popular misconception that the string of belief in a God travels from belief to agnosticism to atheism. This couldn't be futher from the truth. agnosticism and atheism are two different comments on two different things.

Gnosticism is a knowledge of God. It can be that you know what God is, wants from you or what his/her favourite ice cream flavour is. Or it could be that you know God doesn't exist. The key here is to understand this is discussing what you know (or percieve to know).

Agnosticism is the rejection of gnostic claims. That is to say, the agnostic has no reliable knowledge about God and finds claims about specific knowledge unconvincing.

TLDR: Gnosticism claims knowledge, Agnosticism rejects that claim.

Theism is the belief in a God. It can be that you believe your God sacrificed himself to himself to create a loophole in a rule that he himself created. It can be that you believe God chose someone who took a bride at 9 to be his holy messenger. Whatever floats your boat.

Atheism is the rejection of theistic claims. That is to say, atheists do not believe simply because they do not believe. To most atheists, not believing in God is akin to not believing in fairies, unicorns and/or ghosts.

TLDR: Theism claims belief, Atheism rejects belief.



I don't totally agree with the chart, but it does get the point across.


But to show you that they really are seperate, I'll show you how they're interchangable.

Gnostic / Atheist: This is a person who doesn't believe in God and who claims to know God doesn't exist.

Gnostic / Theist: This is a person who believes in a God and claims to know that God does exist. Or that his faith represents actual knowledge of God.

Agnostic / Atheist: This is a person who rejects both concepts of "knowing about god" and "believing in God".

Agnostic / Theist: Usually termed a deist, these people generally stick to the concept that no faith has it right and but that a God does exist.

Of course, these explanations do not represent everyone of those groups, but it gives you a general idea.

So, what mix are you? Why are you that mix?