I've thus far restrained myself from injecting my thoughts into the currently prominent disagreement in this thread. At this point I would like to offer a few ideas in light of which I feel the discussion should be considered.
Belief and Knowledge - Knowledge is ordinarily defined as "true and justified belief" -- thus, all knowledge is belief, but not all belief is knowledge. Generally, belief is accepted to be "justified" (and therefore true) when that belief is accorded some real experience in reality. For example, I am justified in believing that I am typing on my laptop because I am currently interacting with it directly. I therefore know that I am typing on my laptop. Less commonly, beliefs are said to be justified by sound logical deduction. This kind of knowledge is more-or-less limited to abstractions such as mathematics.
Atheism and Agnosticism - The theist/atheist dichotomy deals with belief. The gnostic/agnostic dichotomy deals with knowledge, or whether or not the belief is true and justified. An agnostic theist will hold a belief that a god exists, but he will not believe that his belief is necessarily true and justified. It could be likened to a "guess" or "speculation." A gnostic atheist, in contrast, will hold a belief that exactly zero gods exist, and furthermore he will hold that this belief is true and justified.
Intellectual honesty - In my experience debating this topic (which is considerable), none of the four possible positions which result from the intersection of the aforementioned dichotomies is necessarily intellectually dishonest. It is conceivable (although not necessarily likely, or even arguably impossible) that a person has had personal experience which justifies his belief, even when his experience is totally non-reproduceable for other observers. Outside observers can legitimately doubt the validity of his claims about his experience, but that does not necessitate intellectual dishonesty on his part since it remains conceivable that he alone has had such experience.
Argumentation - It is intellectually dishonest to insist that someone else should be convinced of the truth of a person's belief without supplying an adequate demonstration that appropriately justifies that belief for the other person. In simpler terms, one must only shoulder a burden of proof if he hopes to be persuasive to another person. If he has made an argument which he intends to be persuasive and defends as his basis for his claim to have true and justified belief, but which can be shown to be fallacious, then the criteria for intellectual dishonesty are met.
It is my belief that the rare animal "gnostic atheist," is intellectually dishonest when he is trying to be persuasive. Due to the slippery nature of the term "god" there can be constructed a plethora of conceivable scenarios, the falsity of which could not possibly be confirmed by the experience of the gnostic atheist.
Mai too sense....
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