The Indefensibility of Positive Agnosticism

Gnosticism is a claim to knowledge. I will define here "Positive Agnosticism" as the claim of "knowledge that the existence of a god can not be known" as apposed to weak or "Negative Agnosticism" which is the claim of "knowledge that the existence of a god is not known but not necessarily unknowable". The Position of negative agnosticism is defensible but not mutually incompatible with Atheism. The term "Agnostic Atheist" can be loosely translated as "I do not know if any gods exists but I do not believe that one does". Positive Agnosticism is internally inconsistent or contradictory because the claim that "the existence of a god can not be known" is a claim to knowledge about the inability to know anything of a gods existence. Positive Agnosticism could be re-phrased as Gnostic Agnosticism. It is a position of knowledge about the unknowability of a proposition. I would postulate that the unknowability of a proposition can not be known by definition. You can not get from "the existence of god is unknown" to "the existence of god is unknowable" with out defining god as unknowable at which point no valid reason can be given to believe that such a god exists.

Although it is possible to have knowledge of the existence of an entity given sufficient evidence for its existence, it is not possible to have knowledge of the non-existence of an entity. Positive Agnosticism is untenable because it is internally contradictory at the point where it makes a claim to knowledge about knowledge that is impossible, the non-existence of a god, to have.