Religions of Southperry

Anybody correct me if you disagree, but I think that the view of agnosticism not being a religion is one that more people will agree with, as atheists already view themselves and other people that don't believe in god as non religious, they consider themselves as non religious, and those of traditional religions tend to view them as netural as they don't deny the existance of God like atheists do.

Not disagreeing with you in what I'm about to say. I just have something further to add.

The traditional approach for religion is that everyone falls somewhere on a line, with atheism off to the left, theism off to the right, and agnosticism more toward the center.

However, this doesn't work for a few reasons. Agnosticism (and the counterpart, Gnosticism) is a knowledge based position. You know for certain that a God does or does not exist, or that God is knowable or unknowable. Theism (and the counterpart, Atheism) is a faith-based position. You either have the absence of faith, or you fully believe (and of course everything in between). Keeping everything on one line is mixing together knowledge-based and faith-based decisions.

So, instead of using a line, we use a Cartesian plane.

Agnostic Theism	Agnostic Atheism
Gnostic Theism	Gnostic Atheism

We can use this table to describe how various people view religions. For example, MasPan claimed a form of Deism. Deists believe that God started it all, but he is no longer present in day-to-day life. This makes a knowledge based claim that God is unknowable, making MasPan an Agnostic. However, he also states that a God exists, so that makes him a theist. That puts him firmly in Quadrant II.

A militant atheist (as some might call an "anti-theist"), on the other hand, knows that a God can't exist. That makes him a Gnostic. He also has no belief in any deities of any sort, making him an Atheist. That puts him in Quadrant IV.

Christian Fundamentalists would go in Quadrant III.

Get it? That should make classifying things a bit simpler.