Atheism is the default position for humans with respect to belief in gods, because it is always chronologically prior to theism.

Agnosticism and gnosticism are positions that relate to knowledge about the existence of gods. These terms are independent of atheism and theism, which talk about belief in gods. Agnosticism is (at a minimum) the position of lacking knowledge about the existence of gods. 'Hard agnosticism’ has been used to mean the belief that such knowledge is in principle unattainable.

The atheism that we are all born into is a form of agnostic atheism. George Smith called the atheism of babies implicit atheism.

Posted: September 27th 2010

See all questions answered by bitbutter

Atheism is the default position because theism and deism aren’t. You have to be brought to theism or deism, either by those who raise you or by your own thought process, but you’re not born a theist or deist. Lack of theism, and usually lack of deism, is thought of as atheism.

Agnosticism is more problematic as a default position because it means different things to different people. By default, certainly, we don’t know whether there’s a god, which is why many atheists (including me) think of themselves as agnostic atheists. So in that sense, the default position is agnostic atheism.

But then there’s the now-optional component of agnosticism where one decides that it’s impossible to know whether there’s a god. This is not a default conclusion.

Posted: September 27th 2010

See all questions answered by SmartLX

This question only makes sense in the light of a common misunderstanding of the meaning of Agnosticism. As originally defined by Thomas Huxley, is not a neutral or “I don’t know” position. At its extreme, it’s an assertion that it is not possible to answer questions about the existence (or not) of gods.

This means that you are not faced with a choice between atheism and agnosticism. You can be both atheist and agnostic at the same time, to various degrees. This recent post on irreligion.org puts it graphically: on the graph, the two axes are orthogonal (at 90 degrees) to each other.

Just as most atheists don’t positively assert “there are
no gods”, you won’t often find an agnostic who positively asserts “it’s impossible to know”. It’s a matter of degree, according to one’s personal preferences. We should not say “impossible” when we really mean “extremely difficult” or “highly unlikely”.

Posted: September 26th 2010

See all questions answered by brian thomson