Note: there is a third axis at the lower right corner along which different dogmas fall. This axis collapses to a single line between the agnostic and atheist corners in the same way that the ontological axis collapses to a point at zero certainty on the epistemological axis.

In "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins described a sliding scale of belief from 1-10, with 1 being certain that there is a god, 10 being certain that there is not, and 5 as agnosticism. Later I saw a blog (I will provide a link when I find it again) that put all belief into 4 boxes: agnostic theism and agnostic atheism at the top, and gnostic theism and gnostic atheism on the bottom. This provides two dimensions: and epistemological and ontological dimension, but still seems too limiting.

My attempt at expanding this is provided here, and includes the two axes, but fleshes them out more. For example, deism does not fit neatly into ay of the four boxes, or anywhere on Dawkins' scale. Also, no atheist (at least no one I've ever read about) has claimed to be 100% certain about anything really. Atheism tends to be associated with a skeptical epistemology. Therefore any atheist can make the claim that they aren't really an atheist, but an agnostic, even when they believe exactly the same thing as someone who calls himself\herself an atheist. Describing belief on this diagram clarifies the problems of classifying peoples' beliefs with neat labels. Later I will add to this diagram to show the atheist's boundaries for where atheism and agnosticism are, along with the agnostic's and theist's boundaries for the same.

This blog entry has been in my head for a while, but was directly motivated by this post at WEIT. Coyne's opening, "God-is-but-a-transcendence-beyond-a-symbol theology is not only unrepresentative of religion in general, but hard to distinguish from atheism" is consistent with my understanding of pantheism and its placement on this diagram, I believe, clarifies the point.

Of course the reason why there is confusion in the first place may be intentional: people who want to avoid being labeled "atheists" move definitions around and create new labels to accomplish that goal.