Reply #102: So am I. So, I strongly suspect, is darkstar. Both atheistts too though

[dmallind]

as far as I can judge. I am more than willing to get darkstar's correction on that.

But regardless of that, agnosticism refers ONLY to epistemology - if and how we can KNOW something. It's a word invented in 1869 by a man, Thomas Huxley, who left extensive writings about what he meant. (what were simple nonbelievers called before that and indeed any time before about 50 yrs ago in the paranoid McCarthyite era when some atheists got a bit windy about using the word, quite rightly in fear for their safety and livelihoods - ah yes, atheists). It is a refutation of gnosis - knowledge by means of mystical revelation (gnosis here in the sense of the gnostic sects, not the Platonist sense). It states simply that we cannot claim certainty from merely intrinsic subjective knowledge. As such I am 100% agnostic - I agree that we can't claim certainty via gnosticism. I am also 100% atheistic - as I have never yet heard any god claims that have sufficient evidence to engender belief - I am without gnosticism, and without atheism. The former is an epistemological stance, the latter ontological.