Been seeing this one a lot. We have a box but don't know what, if anything, is in it. Or we have a jar of something, but don't know if there's an odd or even amount. Supposedly, the theist position is a claim to know exactly what's in the box, or a claim to know there's an odd or even amount of things in the jar. The atheist, on the other hand, simply does not know what is in the box, or does not know if the items are even or odd.
This analogy doesn't really match the actual philosophy. Yes, gnostic theism claims to know exactly what's in the box, but theism in general simply believes *something* is in the box. However the atheist is not convinced anything is in the box, that it's likely empty. For the atheist to simply be unsure what's in the box would first require them the accept something is in it, basically an acceptance that gods exist, but no certainty on which gods or their nature. Likewise, atheists aren't arguing about whether there are an even or odd amount of gods/things in the jar, they're arguing that the jar seems empty.
Why does the minor difference matter? Atheists try to use these examples to show atheism as simply not taking a stance, rather than a belief in emptiness. This is dishonest, a twist on the position to make it seem it is not a belief. The analogy also ignores agnosticism, in order to make it seem that atheism and agnosticism are identical in the examples. Just more dishonesty, what else can be expected!
Let me shred some light on this matter.
Here is an excerpt from -
Michael Martin. ATHEISM. A Philosophical Justification :
"If you look up "atheism" in a dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one considers it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek "a" means "without" or "not" and "theos" means "god."[1] From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God.[2]
Well-known atheists of the past such as Baron d'Holbach (1770), Richard Carlile (1826), Charles Southwell (1842), Charles Bradlaugh (1876), and Anne Besant (1877) have assumed or have explicitly characterized atheism in the negative sense of absence of belief in God.[3] Furthermore, in the twentieth century George H. Smith, in
Atheism: The Case Against God (1979), maintains, "An atheist is not primarily a person who
believes that god does
not exist; rather he does
not believe in the existence of god."[4] Antony Flew, in "The Presumption of Atheism" (1972), understands an atheist as someone who is not a theist.[5] Gordon Stein, in
An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (1980), says an atheist "is a person
without a belief in God."[6] A recent pamphlet entitled "American Atheists: An Introduction" says an atheist "has no belief system" concerning supernatural agencies.[7] Another recent pamphlet entitled "American Atheists: A History" defines American atheism as "the philosophy of persons who are free from theism."[8]
Still there is a popular meaning of "atheism" according to which an atheist not simply holds no belief in the existence of a god or gods but believes that there is no god or gods. This use of the term should not be overlooked. To avoid confusion, let us call this
positive atheism, and the type of atheism derived from the Greek root and held by the atheistic thinkers surveyed above let us call
negative atheism. Clearly, positive atheism is a special case of negative atheism: Someone who is a positive atheist is by necessity a negative atheist, but not conversely.
In my usage, positive atheism is positive only in the sense that it refers to a positive belief—the belief that there is no god or gods. It is positive in contrast to negative atheism, which has no such positive belief. Of course, in another sense that is not relevant here, what I have called positive atheism is more negative than what I have called negative atheism. Positive atheism denies that one or more gods exist; negative atheism does not."
Now, consider 'Agnostic' straight from
Huxley' ( the person that coined the term ) mouth:
"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic". It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. ... To my great satisfaction the term took."
To Huxley, such a thing as negative/weak atheism didn't exist in his view. To him, atheists were all certain about God's not existing. Not everyone has ( or had ) the same world view though. To others, atheism doesn't require this degree of certainty. In the end, it doesn't matter though. It is all about preference.
