Agnosticism is often seen as a middle ground between atheism and theism. Many agnostics view atheism and theism as absolute claims about reality.
Theism and atheism are not claims of knowledge. Theism and atheism deal with belief; theism is the belief that a god or gods exist and atheism is the lack of those beliefs. Theism and atheism are not claims of knowledge only belief. Agnosticism on the other hand does deal with knowledge. Gnosticism is the belief that the existence or non-existence of gods is knowable while agnosticism is the belief that the existence of gods is unknowable. (a)gnosticism and (a)theism deal with two separate but related issues: knowledge and belief. A gnostic theist would claim to know that a god(s) exists, an agnostic theist would believe a god(s) exists but not claim to know that god(s) exists, a gnostic atheist would claim to know that god(s) do not exist and a agnostic atheist would not believe a god(s) exists but will not claim a god(s) does not exist. Making the matter tricky is the definitions of the word "god". While "god" is no where near as vague as "higher power" it is (like many words in the english language) rather vague. It could mean anything from a creator of the universe not necessarily supernatural to a powerful supernatural being not necessarily the creator of the universe to an omnipotent being. Depending on how "god" is used a person can be a an agnostic theist, gnostic theist, agnostic atheist or a gnostic theist. For example my beliefs: Yahweh, Allah, Ahura Mazdā, Thore, Ra, Zeus, etc, I am gnostic atheist towards them but gods that (though apathy or a prime directive) do not interact with us and gods who hide evidence for their existence I am agnostic atheist toward. Agnosticism is not a middle ground it is a separate but related category of belief. You can not be agnostic alone just as you can not be atheist or theist alone.
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Seems to me that agnosticism is, philosophically, the position that it is impossible to know – about anything! Much wider than just a god or religion.
As such, I think it is an arrogant approach – to claim that we can never know. And, of course, agnostics in their day to day life are happy to use the scientific knowledge that humanity has acquired.
I agree, atheist is the more appropriate description – it’s about belief not an absolutely confirmed knowledge. People seem to resort to agnostic out of timidity – giving in to theists who attempt to make “atheist” a bad word.
[...] has written an article for Slate Magazien called An Agnostic Manifesto. In the article he takes the agnostic fence sitting to its illogical conclusion. He has taken his misunderstanding of agnosticism, and mixed it with [...]
When the term agnostic was coined by Robert Ingersoll back in the day it was meant to encompass a good many shades of belief held today by persons who consider themselves to be atheists and the term atheist applied strictly to what are now known as strong atheists but then in the 1960s Anthony Flew concocted some semantic gymnastics allowing for some degree of doubt in using the atheist label … I guess I think that people should be allowed to label themselves as they see fit the same as fundies shouldn’t be going around saying liberal christians aren’t real christians because they don’t believe in a talking snake or whatever …