What are Atheism and Agnosticism?
Due to the disparity between conventional and contemporary understandings of atheism, philosophers have attempted to branch atheism into two separate categories: positive atheism and negative atheism. Positive atheism is the classical understanding. It is the definitive view, the strong view, that God (or any god) does not exist. Negative atheism, the weak view, is the mere absence of belief in God (or any divine being – sometimes it serves as a synonym for naturalism). In this relatively new understanding, atheism enjoys a category split so that both definitions can maintain their place amongst their parent heading: atheism. However, this amounts to reducing atheism to nothing more than agnosticism. Agnosticism was originally coined by the 19th century lecturer at the School of Mines in London, Thomas Henry Huxley. He is best noted as being “Darwin’s bulldog” since he adamantly defended Charles Darwin’s then-infant theory of evolution.
