I understand your feeling, but it might help to understand the origin of the word. It was coined as a response to Gnostic philosophies, the idea that one can "know" something without any demonstrable evidence whatsoever for that knowledge, simply an internal "knowing" requiring no rational process at all.

the man who coined it was being just a little snarky at the time. and the term can be useful in identifying a truth claim from a belief claim. an agnostic atheist doesn't claim "there are no gods", but rather answers the question "do you believe there is?" with "no". a gnostic atheist claims to know by reason alone that no such being exists, a positive assertion as opposed to a rejection of someone else's assertion.

@HereticSin What then of the person who is not sure whether he believes or not. That seems to me the most useful use of the term Agnostic. And your definition of Gnostic appears to differ in your first paragraph from the second. Adding to the muddle, I feel I am on the verge of declaring myself a Gnostic Atheist when it comes to the Abrahamic gods, such is the mountain of evidence which points to them being pure fabrication. As for a Deistic god, it depends on the definition whether I would choose the word Atheist or Agnostic. But then, who REALLY cares about some Deistic god? So I view distinctions about a Deistic god as a bit pointless. What really matters is belief.

@Rossy92 yes, it does differ, but that is because it is used differently today than when it was coined. words change meanings like that, but the belief that knowledge can be had through reason alone without any observable premise to base it on is just as unreasonable as that it can be had through some internal irrational agency, to be honest.

@HereticSin Thanks for clearing that up. But I'm not sure what you mean about unreasonableness. Are you saying that a Gnostic position on a specific deity would be unreasonable? And if that were the case, it would mean that any Gnostic position is unreasonable, which would then mean that the use of the term Agnostic as a self -description of your knowledge on a matter is pointless? Agnostic would then be the mandatory default position applicable to both the believer and the non-believer.

@Rossy92 you have hit Huxley's meaning pretty on the head. the default position SHOULD be agnostic, to any proposition, until rational analysis of evidence for the proposition. It just is not for many people.

I myself am a gnostic atheist, but I acknowledge that my base premises are often different than other people involved in the debate.

@HereticSin I may not have stated the situation clearly when I probably misused the term default. I didn't mean to suggest that it would only be the starting point, but that it would necessarily also be the end point as well as the only possible position. But that would be an extremely literal and narrow interpretation of Agnostic in which one could go down a "rabbit hole" in which practically nothing is knowable. Apparently that is not what you meant. And apparently you do not believe Gnosticism is an untenable position, at least in regard to disbelief, since you yourself are Gnostic?

@Rossy92 correct. I also reject the rabbit hole. while I accept that "cogito ergo sum" reflects the only "true and correct" knowledge we can have about reality, the fact is that "knowledge" within the framework of a shared model of reality is knowledge about reality, so the only rejection of reality itself would be the assumption that I alone exist, and all else is a product of my own imagination, but even then, in a coherent system such as the Universe, where rules are understandable and consistent, even IF it were only my imagination, knowledge would still be knowledge of the rules of my imagined world. the word "knowledge" can only apply to the system within which it seeks to know.

I do not see Gnosticism as an untenable position, correct, but as I said, it would depend on starting premises and definitions. for instance, I can prove a god exists, the pantheist god definitely exists. the discussion then would be whether It is a "god", correct?