Too many times I have informed someone that I am an atheist, only to have them reply, “Oh, but how could you know that God doesn’t exist? You’re taking a faith position!”
Many headaches later, we finally come to an agreement over the definitions of these words.
This arrangement is an attempt to clarify and classify these words, so that their rogue meanings no longer confuse and muddle religious debate.
To begin with, here are the four key terms arranged on a graph with their opposites across from them. This should allow a very rough placement of one’s theological position. It will be refined in greater detail later.
Now here are the terms defined. If the terms are new to you, refer up to the graph to get an idea of how they relate to one another.
The horizontal axis concerns WHAT YOU BELIEVE:
The vertical axis concerns WHAT YOU THINK WE CAN KNOW:
So, to restate:
These four labels can be very useful in describing the way we feel about gods. They can combine together to make more precise labels.
An atheist agnostic is someone who does not believe in gods and also thinks that the existence of gods cannot be known. This might mean that they don’t believe in gods because they haven’t seen any evidence that supports their existence.
A theist gnostic is someone who believes in a god/gods and thinks that the existence of gods can be known. This position is usually referred to as just ‘theist‘, since people who believe in gods, usually also think that their existence can be known.
An atheist gnostic is someone who does not believe in gods, and who thinks that we can know that gods do not exist. A fairly unusual position, they might think they have found proof of the non-existence of gods, or might have been persuaded by life experiences.
A theist agnostic is someone who believes in gods, but thinks that they could not know for sure that their god exists. Another fairly unusual position, as people who have faith in gods usually also think that their god can be known to be real.
So we have two common positions: atheist agnostic and theist
and two less common positions: atheist gnostic and theist agnostic
and we can change the graph to reflect that:
In terms of numbers, the main positions are represented here, and the fringe positions minimized. Though the corners are cut, these positions are by no means impossible. For example, absolute atheist gnostic would express: “I know with absolute certainty that no Gods exist.” And absolute agnostic theist would express: “There is absolutely no way to know God’s existence for certain, but I have no doubt whatsoever that there is one.”
The direction of the arrow represents the direction of skepticism on the graph. The upper-most left is the position of the most doubt, whilst the lower-right displays the position of the most certainty.
The absolute central position is one of apathy or indifference. An apatheist, perhaps.
Someone who does not know what they think yet cannot be placed on the graph, and should make up their mind if they wish to find a theological label for their views.
A very important point is that claims to knowledge are only made in the bottom half of the graph. Only gnostics make claims to knowledge.
A quirk of the theist/gnostic box is that the concept of God changes from corner to corner. (Click images to enlarge)
So, to get an idea of what all this means, here’s some common positions located on the graph:
It’s important to remember that these terms can still be misleading.
When talking about different gods that people believe in, we could pick different positions on the graph depending on which god is under discussion. For example, Christians will be on the theist axis when it comes to Jesus, but on the atheist axis when it comes to Zeus.
People who refer to themselves in casual usage as atheists usually mean that they are atheists for all possible gods, whilst a Muslim would be an atheist for all gods except Allah.
Finally, here’s the graph in its final form. Where do you fit?
By Peter Brietbart
Peter[A]freethinker.co.uk
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
September 25th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
It's just like Tangrams! Perhaps Barry could give a prize to the reader who can arrange the shapes into the most interesting design?
(Sorry about that: it's very good really. I like visual representations of concepts – probably because I'm a bit thick!!)
September 25th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Excellent graph =]
This helped refine my own understanding a bit more, as well as introduce me to the "gnostic" side of things. I'll be showing this to just about everyone I talk to about religion / beliefs.
Personally, I'm atheist-agnostic. I used to think those were completely separate, haha.
Thank you for taking the time to do this, Peter!
September 25th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Great Post. Anyone who follows the Atheist / Freethought blogosphere has encountered these arguments far too frequently. Greta Christina had a recent post about the same issue just yesterday: http://gretachristina.typepad......hristina...
It is one of the most common misconceptions I hear from people outside the debate who know I'm an Atheist and like to label my position as one based on certainty. It has nothing to do with certainty and everything to do with probability.
September 25th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I’m not sure how I fit in.
I believe it is possible to demonstrate that no god can exist which is both good and omnipotent; but I accept that an omnipotent evil god could (potentially) exist.
September 25th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
An interesting discussion and the illustrations certainly help. It’s always a good idea to get the semantic arguments out of the way to avoid them derailing a proper discussion, but I can’t help but think a certain end of the spectrum are often unwilling to learn what words actually mean when it is so much easier to react to them in an emotional manner. ‘Atheist’ is still a very charged word, no matter what it may actually mean in any given context.
Anyway, there is a position which I would consider myself to be that I am not quite sure where to plot it on the graph. I do not believe in any particular, personal god’s existence, but I also think it is very possible to know whether a god exists or not (if it were to tell us of its existence, that would be a good start). I would have gone with the term atheist agnostic since I don’t believe but I think we could know, but all examples of this position seem to point to knowing that there is definitely not a god. That’s not really reflective of what I feel. So any help here would be appreciated. Maybe I just missed something.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Why is the arrow in final51.jpg diagonal? Shouldn't be the kind of god be outside the diagram? As for the different gods, there should one diagram for a higher-power-god and one diagram for a personal god: I can be absolutely certain that a higher power exists or just half-way certain that a higher power exists. The certitude of belief (x-axis) has nothing to do with the kind of god believed in.
Don't confuse certainty of belief with level of activity. It is true that believer in a personal God tend to religiously more active than believers in a higher power. But that says nothing about the certitude of belief.
September 25th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
To clarify, while I think we CAN know if a god exists, that doesn’t mean I think we DO know yet. So I am sort of a potentially-gnostic-atheist I suppose, but that doesn’t seem the right terminology.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Doesn't this all depend on how one defines 'god'? As an atheist I believe that the 3 letter word – 'g o d' exists just as much as any other word and if I choose to use it as a synonym for the mysteries of existence that science hasn't yet explained who is to say I'm wrong? God defined in that way does 'exist' and inasmuch as we do not know if there are any natural limits to the scope of scientific enquiry it is even possible that this 'god' may be eternal.
This is an entirely different thing from saying that there exists any supernatural being that has ever had any interest whatsoever in the human race, or ever will have, will ever make his existence known, or whose existence we shall ever prove or disprove.
September 25th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I consider myself an ignostic atheist. Whether I'm agnostic or gnostic about the existence of god(s) depends on how you define "god".
The way I see it, gods as they are sometimes defined just can't logically exist and so I feel pretty confident saying they don't exist. However, there might be other beings out there that other people would definite as "gods". I don't know for certain they don't exist, and heck, some people have thought that mere mortals are "gods" — in which case, I can't argue against the existence so much as the definition.
In any case, I don't see much use in "gods" whose existence you can't prove or disprove, so in regards to them I'm an apathetic agnostic atheist. Or, to put it simple, "I don't know and I don't care."
September 25th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Hello The Mike.
I had a quick go at placing your position: http://imgur.com/1069n.jpg
Is that what you meant?
September 25th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!
I don't know how many times I've tried to explain this to theists and atheists alike. Theism and atheism respect belief, and Gnosticism and Agnoticism respect knowledge.
… it is my practical *belief* that are of us are agnostics (in that we don't presently have knowledge of God), and those who believe otherwise are deluded
September 25th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I think it would be a better idea to simply clarify gnostic and agnostic. Lets just limit the concept of "knowledge" to knowledge we currently have. With the knowledge we currently have, we can't know for sure whether or not any gods exist (due to lack of evidence).
If you want to throw "and all future knowledge" into it… well yeah. Then you're just getting into "what ifs". What if the sky turns green and god floats down on a cloud and cures all amputees while shooting unicorns out his ass? Then obviously people would say they'd believe in him.
That hasn't happened though. I think the whole idea here is to stick to what we do have knowledge of, and whether or not that knowledge allows for the existence of a god, or it doesn't.
September 25th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Then we'd have "the problem of good," wouldn't we?
September 25th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Atheist/Agnostic here.
I would argue against the Abrahamic theist position by saying that ancient, pre-scientific peoples who lived on a dust mote in a vast universe were probably, and in many cases demonstrably, wrong about most of what they believed to be true. So thinking they got something as nebulous as the god question right is a bit of an intellectual stretch.
To be both fair and humble, I've got to turn a similar argument on myself: what can this particular dust mote dweller, in this present age of relative ignorance, know about life, the universe, and everything? My answer is that there may yet be some sort of undiscovered god(s) lurking about in the cosmos, or that better evidence than old books and numinous feelings for some current religion may someday come to light, but so far I don't have any good evidence-based reasons to believe in these things, and faith is no substitute for knowledge; it's far too unreliable.
Put more succinctly: I don't know whether or not there are any gods, but I don't believe in them in spite of that fact. (expressed in a humble or supercilious tone, depending on the audience)
September 25th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
One slight problem with this is that "Gnostic" and "Gnosticism" also refer to certain rather specifc religious doctrines (see The Gnostic Gospels)
September 25th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
This is a pretty good graph for a quick stab at the issue.
However, I disagree with the idea that "Someone who does not know what they think yet cannot be placed on the graph." Someone who isn't sure is still without a belief in a god. Since I view the definition of atheist as "someone who is without a belief in god" then anyone without belief in god falls into the category. At least I feel that anyone who isn't sure cant believe, so must be in the other section. So, you could place them center left on the graph, right on the horizontal axis.
I also feel that the chart is a bit confusing because there are (at least?) 2 types of Agnosticism. Strict and Empirical. Strict Agnostics fall on the extremes of the top half of your chart (whether theists or atheists) whereas Empirical Agnostics fall on the Gnostic half, due to the fact that you've defined Gnostic as "can know" instead of "do know".
September 25th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Why do we sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” when we are already there?
September 25th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I don't beleive in a f***ing god will that do!
September 25th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
What an excellent post by Peter Brietbart, his chart illustrates the definitions quite well. As most of us atheists know when debating with theists, you have to debate semantics first as theists are rather fond of changing word definitions to suit their argument.
September 25th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
This agnostic atheist commends your most excellent post.
September 25th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I'm an atheist of the basest kind. I just barely believe all of you guys exist. Even my own image in the mirror doesn't look like me. Perhaps belief is tied closely to trust. The terminally religious probably never had an actual experience with angels or whatever. But they trusted their mother, father, pastor, whatever, who would never lie to them. Thus is dangerous gullibility passed through generations.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
An excellent diagram, the only problem is that "gnostic" has a whole raft of meanings of it's own beyond "we can know whether God exists or not"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
While "Agnostic" does mean "we can't know", I'm not sure that the opposite works… "Gnostic" can mean all sorts of things. I only mention it because if you wander around saying "you are gnostic" people will imagine you mean all sorts of things and you will get more headaches and more arguments about definitions…
September 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Pretty good post. You have correctly labeled deists as gnostic theists – I have seen a lot of debate where people try to describe deists as agnostics.
There is a complication though, because some definitions of god are impossible. A classic example is both an omnipotent and omniscient being. If he knows what he is going to do, that also means he does not have the power to change it (otherwise he is not all-knowing). So a person who is an atheist-agnostic may be atheist-gnostic on some definitions of god. Richard Dawkins makes an excellent point in his writings when he tells (for example Christians) that they are atheist-gnostic of Ganesh and Wotan, and that he merely adds Yahweh to his list.
in other words (surprise-surprise), it's not wise to generalize.
September 26th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Yeah but.
What if I were one of the gods, and due to an identity crisis or whatever, I doubted my own existence. Where would I fit into the…
Oh why do I even bot
September 26th, 2009 at 4:13 am
It seems to me that the missing lower left corner doesn't make sense. You're saying there are few strong atheists (far left) who believe strongly that we can know whether gods exist or not (far bottom)? I think people can't logically have a strong opinion about whether gods exist (positively or negatively) unless they also believe strongly we can know it.
The two upper corners should be the missing triangles, so the diagram looks like a house. I'm saying there are very few strong (non)believers who also feel strongly that we can't know for sure. These two opinions seem contradictory.
In fact, maybe the whole diagram should be a triangle. Lower left point is strong atheist/strong gnostic. Lower right point is strong theist/strong gnostic. Upper point is strong agnostic and 0 on the atheist/theist axis.
September 26th, 2009 at 9:30 am
I refuse to be labelled!
I just don’t believe in divinity! How hard can it be?
How would you label a baby or a 2 year old ?
I have no label either for not collecting stamps or for not believing that the earth is flat.
September 26th, 2009 at 8:41 am
This is an interesting chart which has provoked much good discussion. But I think the problem you point out when you say "When talking about different gods that people believe in, we could pick different positions on the graph" is a bigger problem than it first appears.
Without a proper definition of "god", I do not know where I would fit on the graph.
Are we talking about obviously made-up, logically contradictory constructs such as Yahweh or Allah? I think it's possible to know that these gods don't exist, and I definitely don't believe in them. So that would put me somewhere near the bottom left (truncated) corner.
Are we talking about a deistic "prime mover" without human characteristics, which created the universe and is now, as Ali G put it, "just chilling"? We can't really know whether such a thing exists or not – it isn't self-contradictory like Yahweh – but I still don't believe in it. So that would put me near the top left.
Or are we using a pantheistic definition, where god is nature? If we accept such a definition, I think we can pretty much know that "god" exists, and I believe in it. So that would put me down at the bottom right.
Which brings us to the problem of the "quirk box", where two different types of god suddenly make an appearance. God-type cannot be determined by the sum of your atheism + agnosticism, because your atheism/agnosticism is determined by which type of god you are talking about!
Even on its own terms, the quirk box doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. It is perfectly possible to think you can know for sure that personified, interventionist god exists (I have met many people who think this), which would put you at the extreme bottom right. Equally, you might well think that you can't really know about a "mysterious higher power", but still believe very strongly in it, which would put you in the top right.
September 26th, 2009 at 10:24 am
In addition can I offer up the position of Harry's Wager, whereby to avoid angering whatever divinities may exist I avoid making claims as to what they want, what they are like or how they view me, since getting it wrong would be more dangerous than just not going there in the long term?
September 26th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
It should really be a line divided into three, or at most a spectrum: Rational – Deluded – Liar.
September 26th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I have been Athiest for over 40 years and there is no question in my mind about it. There is no supernatural sky daddy to care of things for you. Religion is man made and the mythological book called the bible was written by men who had nothing better to do in between hearding their sheep.I am not worried about when I die, I realize that is the end of my existance.
September 26th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
wow, a while back I presented this same idea on a forum—denying god exists is meaningless without a definition of god. The consensus was; we don't need to do that; everybody "just knows" what we mean by god. And these guys were atheists. Go figure.
September 26th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
It is true that the nonexistence of "gods" as a class, undefined except for the assumption that if we encountered one we would might well consider it a god, cannot be proven without searching every cc of the universe. But anyone who parrots the big lie that no one has ever proven or can ever prove the nonexistence of "God", defined as a god possessing the oxymoronic qualities attributed to it by major religions, is plain ignorant, repeat, ignorant, and should consider a course in Logic 101. Victor Stenger in, God: The Failed Hypothesis, has proven exactly that. And as early as the third century BCE Epicurus proved that a god that is simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent cannot and therefore does not exist. The chief Christian god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and therefore does not exist. Ditto the Muslim Allah and Jewish Yahweh.
Agnosticism was defensible in the nineteenth century, before historians started applying their analytical skills to the J/C bible. Today it is analogous to claiming that we cannot know whether Mother Goose or Alice in Wonderland exists.
September 26th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
So there can still be
- omnipotent omniscient indifferent god
- omnipotent non-omniscient good/evil god
- omnipotent non-omniscient indifferent god
-any non-omnipotent god, where morality and omniscience play no part in whether or not it can exist
September 26th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
I'm assured that there's another position: opportunistic. In particular, any vicar who benefits from a splendid new house with all mod cons (yes, such do exist while nearby draaughty Victorian vicarages are crumbling). Would that be "willfully deluded", I wonder?
September 27th, 2009 at 2:32 am
To me, this agnostic/gnostic argument within atheism is totally unnecessary and somewhat of an intellectual fraud, an unnecessary encumbrance to the whole position.
First off, WHICH god is it that you're atheistically agnostic about? Are you also atheistically agnostic/gnostic about the thousands of Hindu gods? Do you also reserve a place for them in your unsure knowledge?
What about the gods of the Australian Aboriginals; are you agnostic about them or is it just 'God' you're agnostic about? Or what of the gods of the American Indians? Do you reserve a position of 'we can't really know for sure that the giant serpent god exists'? or that Atlas just really might be holding the world on his shoulders, as we can't really know for sure? Are you atheist agnostic about Zeus? Thor the Thunder god? Odin?
Why does this 'God' get a special status of agnosticism?(Meaning… without knowledge. The 'a' before agnostic is a Greek prefix that means 'without'. The same as the 'a' before 'atheism'. The word was A-theos…without god. and having knowledge of something does not automatically then imply that the thing you have knowledge of is real).
'God', gods and goddesses are MYTHOLOGICAL beings, no different from centaurs, cyclopes, gorgons, harpies, furies, Fates, mermaids and vampires. Do you also reserve a place for agnosticism with them too? as they are all as equal in the case of being unable to be proven not to exist. 'God', is a mythological being, and so why do we reserve for 'him' this special place of agnosticism?
I am one of those rare atheists then, and I say positively there is no god, or gods, or goddesses, just as I say there are no unicorns, fairies at the bottom of my garden, mermaids, sirens, or Harry Potter and the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When atheists finally realize that 'God' is a fictional character, invented by human beings, you will no longer feel the need to call yourself an atheist agnostic–the whole argument is an unnecessary blind to the position that very much needs to be asserted in this day and age of continuing religious superstition and interference in our lives; we need to stop fooling around with 'atheistic agnosticism' and say, There is no God.
September 27th, 2009 at 4:50 am
In contrast to the terms on offer here, I would probably describe myself as an "atheist realist", meaning that I reject belief in God as anything other than a product of the human imagination. When one accepts all gods and spirits as human cultural constructs, one has a basis for forming realistic models of the nature of religion and the roles it plays in the imaginitive human-centred cosmologies that different cultures have constructed for themselves. As for the cosmological "truth claims" of these religions, I would favour the logical positivist view that such claims are too devoid of real information to be empirically meaningful.
September 27th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I was trying to find some reference in the comments the Russell's orbiting teapot, but instead I found Callisto's comment which says it all.
September 27th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
One minor quibble with your otherwise logical and valid comment: The picture of Atlas holding a global world on his shoulder was a very late invention unrelated to the original Atlas myth. At a time when it was believed that the earth is flat and the sky a solid hemispherical dome, Atlas, a deification of the north African Mount Atlas, was assigned the task of holding up the sky so that it did not collapse under its own weight.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Why do scientists call it research when looking for something new?
September 27th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
This graph reminds me of http://www.politicalcompass.org/ have any of you ever seen it?
I'd be in the bottom left hand corner, how about you?
is there much, if any correlation between ones political views and their theological position, do you think?
September 27th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
This graph reminds me of http://www.politicalcompass.org/ have any of you ever seen it?
I'd be in the bottom left hand corner, how about you?
is there much, if any, correlation between ones political views and their theological position, do you think?
September 27th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Not certain of the the semantics of the word research but my definition is: a systematic investigation to establish a fact.
I must agree that Callisto's well argued comment above has a valid point in that we atheists/freethinkers/non-believers are in danger of elevating the status of certain gods above others when we know that they all belong in mythology and therefore equally fictitious. I am convinced that there are no gods, logic, reason and scientific inquiry would have me say with 100% certainty as we have no evidence for, but plenty to suggest none; and we cannot prove something that doesn't exist, doesn't exist. As always, the burden of proof of gods falls upon those who cling to this foolish proposition.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:05 am
WOW.. that made so much sense. I don't know why nobody was ever able to describe it like that before. I think I'm more of an agnostic than I realised.
September 29th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Thanks! I wrote a post about this very topic and one of my commenters pointed me here. Nice job!
September 29th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I'm always doubtful about these sorts of diagrams, they are typical of pseudoscience. They are only really valid if you can put numerical values along the axes, and identify all the points in the areas with some clear meaning. I have a problem from the start. You don't define what you mean by belief and knowledge. For me belief is dependent on knowledge, they are not independent variables. I base the strength of my belief on the evidence. Perhaps by belief you mean knowledge based on personal experience as opposed to our communal scientific knowledge?
October 1st, 2009 at 10:30 am
I am clear where I stand on this issue and I think you have a very good post here, the visual representation does a good job explaining the concepts without leaving much room for doubt.
I think the best way to respond to religious quips, how do you know that god does not exist, I believe he does?
“Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise. The statistical standards of evidence needed to reject the null hypothesis are substantial…ideally 95 to 99 percent confident that the results were not caused by chance before we offer our provisional assent that the effect may be real…Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not ,ake the claim false…[and] rejecting the null hypothesis is not a warranty on truth.” – Michael Shermer
This means that the onus of proof for the null hypothesis lies on the person asserting a positive claim, not on the skeptic to disprove it.
Vis a vis “You say you believe in god and that god exists, substantiate it?”
“If he doesn’t exist why ar ewe here?” -answering with questions
“If you can’t show he doesn’t exist then he must.”
Typical responses.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I don't think this author understands the teapot argument. It's ridiculous that you're putting atheism under a belief title.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Who cares? "The Golden Rule" has worked for over a half of a century for me.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:42 am
What about someone who says that they don't know what the word "God" denotes? What about someone who suspects it doesn't actually denote anything (like "squircle", being defined as "a square circle")?
To such people, the answer to the belief question "Does God exist?" is not "Yes", or "No" or "Probably" or "Probably not", but rather:
"Eh?"
October 8th, 2009 at 7:42 am
Interesting. However, your initial premise of the majority viewpoints is incorrect. You state that Atheist Gnostic and Theist Agnostic are both the "fringe positions". This is completely backwards. By far, the prevalent belief of most Theists is Agnostic – "One cannot KNOW if god exists, but I have FAITH that my god is real." This is the failsafe position for most Theists, and one of their arguments in favor of a faith based lifestyle. Likewise most Atheists are in fact Gnostic, believing that there is ample 'evidence' supporting the position that "no god can exist", and since a god CANNOT exits, it is foolhardy to waste personal time and effort believing in one.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
This don't cover all positions.
What do you call someone then who not only doesn't believe in god, but also believes that god does not exist. Note that this is not an atheist gnostic. Reason being: I (under your taxonomy) am an atheist, I do not believe in god, however I also believe it is possible to know whether god exists or not, furthermore I believe that I have not aquired this knowledge, I just think it's possible given the right circumstances. As such, I am counted as an atheist gnostic (something which I thought would be fairly common). But I plainly do not believe that god does not exist. I imagine by symmetry, there would be a similar deficiency in the theist camp.
This is interesting, because the use of "atheism" which you are objecting to in this post is exactly the position that fills this gap.
Maybe you need to redefine agnostic and gnostic. i.e. gnostic is someone who believes they do know whether god exists or not. Of course by doing this, you've thrown away the possibility of all the nice positions you have outlined. I'd suggest a third category. Doing this though would result in two rather large problems. 1) What word do you choose, seems to me the standard word used in at least some everyday language is "atheist" and "theist" (of course with meanings different from what you have defined here. As such, I think the response you have to make to people would to not show them such a chart, but point out that "atheist" is ambiguous, and needs to be distinguished between (at least) 2 different meanings.
and 2) your chart won't look so pretty.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Brilliant! This post very well explains what I was trying to get across in a similar post last year.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I would disagree with regards to one small justification. You've written under gnostic atheist "I'm pretty sure". That wouldn't be gnostic atheism, gnostic would be "I know god doesn't exist."
October 8th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
that was great! i was always confused by these terms. i know now that i was/am atheist agnostic. i always thought atheist means one who says Gods don't exist and Agnostic means one who says i don't know whether they do, they might. i have read recently that the psychologist Dr Albert Ellis described himself as probabilistic atheist. What could that mean?
Thanks Peter. i will sure give you a thumbs up AND subscribe to the RSS.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I posted some thoughts on this chart here http://camelswithhammers.com/2.....istingui... in case there is any interest.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
as and Ignostic I dont fall into any of these! woot! heh
October 13th, 2009 at 3:18 am
the one in the middle. could be a relativist person. someone who can believe in the 4 extremes at the time. ^^
October 18th, 2009 at 3:03 am
I find it amusing that the first post is completely distracted from the point of the article…
October 29th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I’m thinking that it quite rightly represents the situation today, which amounts to a kind of blackmail. Any truly free thought or act is rendered impossible by these coordinates. I see three options, not four (or the multiplicity of “options” within the four spaces of the graph): 1.) choose a place, and hold it; 2.) move around, explore; and 3.) draw a circle around the graph, then draw a diagonal line through it.
Actually, 1. & 2. could perhaps be thought of as only one. As for 1., is this not the definition of dogmatism? What about fundamentalism? If nothing else, your representation is useful for seeing how there can be atheist fundamentalism just as well as a theist one. As for 2.), is this not a kind of nomadic-anarchism? What are the implications and effects of that?
What interests me about the latter option is how radically opposed it is to the central point of the graph, that is, the point of indifference.
November 1st, 2009 at 8:09 am
While I agree with most of what the author said, there is a bit of this that is very misleading.
The first mistake:
He attempts to explain what Atheists are by only one general label: “Atheists Don’t believe in God”. This is not an accurate portrayal of all Atheists. I’m an Atheist, or more appropriately titled an “Anti-Theist”… which is the rejection of all theism -which is man-made religion. I do not reject the idea of there being a God. I do not pray. I do not believe there is enough evidence to support the idea of a God but I am willing to understand that there is a possibility one could exist. I rule nothing out. [Wiki: "Atheism can be either the rejection of theism, or the position that deities do not exist."]
Second mistake:
Whether or not there is God, no one knows for sure which makes everyone an automatic agnostic because they do not know, nor could they ever. By the definition; Agnostic means “without knowledge”. This makes me an Agnostic Atheist. If you believe or have “faith” in God, then this makes you an Agnostic Theist.
Third mistake:
To say there is no God would require a leap of opposing irrational faith. However, most Atheists I’ve met are smart enough not to say this but instead say “It may not be said there is no God. It may, however, be said that there has never been any reason to believe there ever was one.” Or something to that effect.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:20 am
There is only one problem with what you have said that i can tell,that being your definition for gnostic.Which supports the knowledge for a god(god’s)existence,however the definition of gnostic says nothing of that knowledge knowing a god doesn’t exist.
January 1st, 2010 at 4:59 am
“theism -which is man-made religion.”
XXX wrong. Theism is belief in god(s). School’s out now, run along. Don’t forget to do your homework.
January 12th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
I’d have a straight line in this. I am definitely a “hard core” atheist. I sometimes call myself an “evangelical atheist”. That laways confuses theists. That’s amusing.
January 17th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Clarity of discussion is valuable. Bravo!
January 30th, 2010 at 3:32 am
Excellent article Peter. I’m going to add it as supplemental reading on the most popular page on my website:
http://www.rationalresponders......or_atheist
I agree with your dissection.