OverclockedJesus Posted:

You misunderstand. They’re not completely unrelated, but agnosticism is not some middle position between atheism and theism, as it appears they believe. Orthogonal means “at a right angle to”, and agnosticism intersects atheism and theism at right angles, as it were. Atheism and theism relate to belief or lack thereof regarding the existence of something. Agnosticism relates to knowledge or lack thereof of something. So a person can be an agnostic atheist or agnostic theist. But clearly, given that the something must be stated, one cannot simply be “agnostic”, for that is self-refuting. If you lack all knowledge, then by even communicating you admit knowledge of yourself, the external world, others in the external world, language, grammar, syntax, etc. So a person can’t lack all knowledge—it’s just not possible. Thus, agnosticism is not a 3rd option, but rather a modifier of atheism and theism in this instance (it can be applied to other ideas, too).

I see what you mean now. I took the wrong meaning of orthogonal.