I find myself perplexed that somehow some people who consider their selves to be atheists are actually agnostics who are enamored by the term atheist. The situation is so bad that there actually exists an agnostic group devoted to trying to educate people to the fact that you can't be both. I have been known to speak of using "atheism" as a pick-up line.
I first became aware of this when I wrote somewhere ( I suspect it was for a paid article) something about atheism vs. agnosticism. I suspect that it was on my google plus account (as I think about it at the moment). Perhaps the discussion came from my article about the end of the question of Rationalism vs. Empiricism in the 20th century due to the work of Einstien (both in quantum mechanics and General Relativity) and the work of Kurt Godel, especially the incompleteness proof . ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)
I have been looking back over my blog, trying to find the article on Rationalism vs. Empiricism, and it appears that I didn't quite write the article. I wrote part of it but never got back to it. That was due to all the problems I had over the last year.
Let me get back to that subject, as it is very similar and relevant to the Atheism vs Agnosticism argument. Both topics suffer from Newspeak. I may be stretching that term a bit, but it seems relevant to me. The terms have ancient well defined meanings. Some people try to change the terms to suit their sloppy thinking.
Rationalism is a system of thought which is predicated on the belief that all Truth can be derived using logic from certain a priori facts aka axioms. Further, such truth is considered to be only real Truth.
Most of you will be familiar with Rationalism in the form of Euclidean Geometry. Euclidean geometry will work fine laying out a football field or building the next Hoover dam. But it becomes evident that there is a problem with it when you start trying to calculate the orbit of the planet Mercury, or use satellites for precision surveying. The reason so much effort and expense is spent on verifying The General Theory of Relativity * is that it settles the question, especially when applied to "space". If you're trying to send a probe to Pluto. you'd better be able to predict the position of your probe and Pluto many years down the line.
Empiricism says that any geometry used for real space must be derived from verifiable, measurable observations. General relativity postulates that gravity has the effect of CURVING space. This effect can be measured accurately during total solar eclipses by measuring the apparent positions of stars close to the image of the sun. General relativity also accurately predicts the orbit of Mercury, and predicts that atomic clocks in orbit around the earth will appear to run slowly.
My experience with modern day atheists is that they are very inconsistent with their definition of atheism. They SAY that atheism is anything other than specific Christian beliefs, but in practice they mean the blind faith axiomatic belief in the absence of any type of consciousness not directly derived from life forms, whether human, other animals, or even plants. Rocks, for instance, are not considered to have awareness.
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