[designNERD]

You can be an Agnostic Atheist.

Agnosticism is about whether you believe you can prove the existence of God or not. Atheism and Theism is about actual belief in God.

One can be an Agnostic Atheist or Agnostic Theist. Agnostic atheist= I don't know whether we can prove God exists but I don't believe in God

Agnostic theist= I don't know where we can prove the God exists or not but I do believe in God.

Being an agnostic is not the "I'm not really sure" category people have made it to be.

[tcskeptic]

Right, and I would describe myself as an agnostic Christian. The claims of Christianity are ridiculous and unprovable, and I believe them.

[gfodor]

Inevitably any internet thread about religion has the "what does agnostic mean" argument. It's dumb, nobody cares. People who call themselves agnostic usually do so because they are too scared to call themselves atheist for whatever reason. (Fear of religious friends judging them, fear of losing pascal's wager, etc.) Or because they think they are clever and think atheists are foolish for asserting there is no God with such certainty. (When in fact the burden of proof lies elsewhere.)

These people should just suck it up and call themselves atheists.

[hnnewguy]

>These people should just suck it up and call themselves atheists.

Boy, look at you telling people what and how they should believe.

I'm agnostic because I don't know if there exists a God, and couldn't care less when it comes to the day to day affairs of my life.

[gfodor]

Right, so what you're saying is you're an atheist. It's okay. There are a lot of us.

I don't know if there is a teapot orbiting the Earth, but I wouldn't invent weasel words to distinguish between subtle groups of people who have varied opinions around the likely absence of said teapot. Especially not if most of the population believed strongly in the existence of said teapot.

edit: Also I'm not telling anyone how to believe, I'm just saying that people using the term agnostic as some way to contrast themselves with atheists either don't understand the term atheist, have an aversion to it or fear of using it to label themselves, or have some unsettled self-reflection to do on their existence because they secretly believe in a God but don't want to admit it. When you say you're an atheist you are saying you do not share the belief in God that most of the human population does. It's pretty simple.

[gliese1337]

Teapotism doesn't have significant cultural importance. Atheism does. To a lot of people, it really does make a difference whether you actually disbelieve in the god they believe in, or if you are genuinely undecided. It is thus useful to have a word to distinguish between those two states, and perfectly honest (hardly weasely) to use them. Even if its only for social signalling, that's important!

[gfodor]

I would guess most atheists would not say that they are certain a God does not exist. They certainly wouldn't say they can prove it to be the case. The path that leads you to atheism is the lack of evidence in favor of an unfalsifiable claim, that God exists. So the claim "God does not exist" is kind of meaningless, since it relies upon the definition of God, which is something atheists do not have a definition for since they do not have a belief about what that word means.

[Rooster61]

Speaking of weasel words, you use the word definition in place of concept. Atheists do have a concept of God. Otherwise the argument of what an atheist is would not only be moot but would in fact never arise as an argument.

[zaccus]

How can you be certain that 0 times any other number will always equal 0? Have you tried multiplying it against every number? Of course not, that's impossible. Does that count as uncertainty?

So I'll put it this way: I am as certain that there is no God (narrowly defined as an omnipotent being) as I am that 0 times any other number will always equal 0. The reason is because omnipotence is a logically inconsistent concept, and is thus impossible. That's as certain as I can be about anything.

[ryandvm]

I think most of us agnostics are simply identifying as such to avoid being associated with the pompous breed of atheists that the Internet's pseudo-anonymity has brought out of the woodwork.

[cheshire137]

And for us agnostic theists out there that don't believe we can prove it to you, but do believe there is a God? I'm definitely not an atheist, thanks for telling me to suck it up.

[SamReidHughes]

That's not what agnostic means. Most people who believe in God wouldn't say they can prove God exists, and they aren't agnostic.

[mjburgess]

No, that is exactly what it means. It doesnt take very long to look something up (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism ).

Agnosticism is not about being uncertain, it's the position that the answer is unknowable or unknown - which is much stronger than merely being uncertain.

[meepmorp]

You have a point, but the person you're responding to makes a more important one - the colloquial definition of agnostic, in reference to religion, is a person who's not sure what they think about the existence of gods. When you call yourself an agnostic, that's what people typically understand by it.

[mjburgess]

That's the problem with surveys like this: the categories are political not philosophical.

It would be better to ask, "Does a deity feature amongst your considerations when making a decision?"

I take it that's what people are mainly interested in anyway.

If this question was asked alongside the others in these questionnaires I think you'd see a high percentage of non-atheist responders agreeing.

[SamReidHughes]

I am not making a point about the colloquial definition. The wikipedia article he linked disagrees with him too.

[jasonkostempski]

If that's the definition then it's useless as a distinguishing label since everyone on either side of faith can't know. If anyone could know, faith and belief wouldn't be necessary.

[mjburgess]

Many atheists and theists believe you can provide evidence one way or another. Most people are not agnostic.

[SamReidHughes]

There is a difference between saying you can prove something and saying you know something. Your own Wikipedia article disagrees with you.

[designNERD]

Just because they wouldn't admit to it does not mean that the condition doesn't exist. And I have met Christians who have stated that they can't prove God one or another but that doesn't stop their belief.

[staticshock]

Sorry, but designNERD is right.

Agnosticism has the greek root "gnosis", which means "knowledge". It's technically defined as a view that some things ("God" being a common, but not sole example) are unknowable. It's an epistemological concept.

Theism has the greek root "theos", meaning "God". Its primary concern is with the actual existence of God, so it's an ontological concept.

It's possible to think of agnosticism as side-stepping the theism debate by saying, "the nature of knowing matters more to me than the nature of being," but they're definitely compatible. You can say that the existence of God is unknowable (agnosticism,) but you believe that He's still out there (theism.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism

[SamReidHughes]

Saying you know something and saying you can prove something are two different things.

[qiqing]

You can also be an Atheist Buddhist.

[jackpirate]

You can also be a Christian Atheist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

[mbell]

I'm curious what your definition of atheism is. I consider myself an atheist but I don't in absolute terms claim that god(s) don't or can't exist, I simply reject the concept of 'belief' at large. i.e. if you can't provide definitive evidence in support of an idea, it's not fact.

[smallegan]

Sounds like you'd fall into the Agnostic category by definition.

[lucisferre]

Deist might be a more useful alternate choice than Agnostic then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

[Dewie]

I don't like to say that I'm an agnostic or atheist or anything like that, because why would I? If I don't believe in a god, calling myself an atheist is like calling myself a non-Christian if I'm not a Christian, or a non-Jew if I'm not Jewish. Why would I define myself in contrast to whatever other religious groups there are, when I'm areligious (at least in my case)? It doesn't make sense.

So because I don't believe in an Abrahamic god, I'm still supposed to take a stand/have an opinion on him. Why? Do Christians have an opinion/stance on Vishnu?

[jonnathanson]

Atheism doesn't necessarily imply that you care about, or are being forced to define yourself against, other people's conceptions of spirituality, or religion, or god(s). It simply means that you don't believe in a god, gods, etc. I'd suspect that for most atheists, the label begins and ends there. Atheism isn't a way of life for most people, and despite what anti-atheist types would proclaim, it's not a "religion," either. At its simplest, atheism is a philosophical stance. Religious people believe the value of god = 1; atheists believe it = 0.

Is atheism often framed within the context of theism? Well, sure, because that's the category of the discussion. Like you, I have a "don't believe; don't care too strongly; not a factor in my life whatsoever" stance toward religion. But if the subject of religion comes up, and I am asked to give my stance on the matter, atheism is a better label than most. "Apathetic atheist," or even "atheist who rejects the premise of this line of inquiry altogether" are acceptable and defensible flavors of atheism.

Atheism isn't specifically defined in opposition to the Abrahamic religions. It so happens that those religions (particularly, Christianity) occupy a majority of this country's religious population, and as such, they're the belief systems most often pitted vis-a-vis atheism, and vice versa. But there were atheists and agnostics long before Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Being an atheist doesn't have to mean much more to your life than not being a tennis fan. The state of not being a tennis fan is largely irrelevant until someone asks you if you watch tennis. At that point, you are temporarily and conditionally defined as a non-tennis-fan, within the framing of tennis fandom as a subject. But your non-tennis-fandom doesn't have to define your life, or even be much of a factor outside of that conversation.

[garbad]

Surely tennis-fandom can be proven? (I know, not your point, but that's what makes religion complicated). At least I'm a 100% sure tennis exists.

[jonnathanson]

Sure. But as you said, that's not really the point of my analogy. I used it more to illustrate the idea that atheism, like tennis non-fandom, can be a conditional state, "called" only when the subject of religion (or tennis) comes up.

Religion is a much more fraught subject than tennis. But the precise subject of the analogy wasn't intended to be 1:1 congruous. I'd be sitting on my butt for weeks, trying to come up with a different analogy, if I felt I needed a measure-for-measure match. :)

[MichaelGG]

Atheist is often an umbrella term for people that don't believe any sort of supernatural things, from an Abrahamic god to forest spirits.

[adrianlmm]

No, you can't be an agnostic atheist, there is no such thing.

[tlrobinson]

Wikipedia, for one, would beg to differ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism

[adrianlmm]

That's interesting.

[conception]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticis...

[designNERD]

Yes you can as I am one.

[hrasyid]

You can check both