[ExI] Fw: Re: atheists declare religions as scams.

[Amon Zero]

On 25 January 2011 17:04, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> Technically, what you speak of is agnosticism.
>
> Agnostic = absence of belief
> Atheist = belief of absence
> That's the difference between the terms.



That's one definition, but not the only possible one. Both terms are in fact
fairly ambiguous. A-gnostic is simply a counterpoint to Gnostic (i.e.
not-gnostic, not-knowing), and a-theist is similarly 'not adhering to a
theism'. Neither is necessarily a 'weak' or 'strong' position, unless it is
further defined to be so for the purposes of a particular argument. As in
any argument, best define terms at the outset.

An interesting variant I once heard is that agnostics don't claim we *don't*
know, but that we *can't* know. I suppose that would be a case of weak vs
strong agnosticism.
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