A lot of ink, digital or otherwise, has been spilled over the meaning of such terms as atheism, theism, agnosticism, strong, weak, etc (including some of my own). Can an atheist be an agnostic? Can a theist be an agnostic? Do all atheists deny the existence of any gods? You get the picture. For some time now I have stated and thought that the easiest way to sort through these semantic problems is by breaking it down into two questions.

Gnosticism and its opposite a-gnosticism have to do with knowledge about something.

Theism and its opposite a-theism have to do with belief about something.

Belief and knowledge are separable. One can does not have to know something is true to believe it to be true. Likewise, one does not have to know something is false to believe it to be false. People believe in things for a variety of different reasons that may or may not have to do with their knowledge of it.

The two questions are thus:

1. Do you believe in God? (Yes = Theist / No = Atheist)
2. Do you know if God does/doesn’t exist? (Yes = Gnostic / No = Agnostic)

Depending on your answers to these two questions there are four possible positions:

1. Gnostic Theist (Believes in God and claims to know that God exists)
2. Agnostic Theist (Believes in God but does not claim to know that God exists)
3. Gnostic Atheist (Does not believe in God and claims to know that God does not exist)
4. Agnostic Atheist (Does not believe in God and does not claim to know that God does not exist)

Granted – this can get a bit more complicated depending on what god, what conception of god, or what definition of god we are talking about. Nevertheless, I am thus happy to find the website www.atheismtest.com which, in my opinion, gets this exactly right – and it is a nice way to interactively demonstrate these points.