Comment by foobar1962
4 days ago
Atheists are people that don't bleieve there is a God. Agnostics are people who don't know they are atheists. -- Aron Ra
4 days ago
Atheists are people that don't bleieve there is a God. Agnostics are people who don't know they are atheists. -- Aron Ra
In practice, atheists are people who think they know there is no god. Agnostics are people who realize they don’t know much at all about anything related to the origins of things and realize they don’t want to hold unprovable dogmatic beliefs like the religious people do.
I considered myself an atheist for most of my life. As I got older and learned more, this shifted. These days I consider myself agnostic.
If atheism was defined as believing a specific kind of god (e.g. the “father god in the sky that created all things in 6 days”) does not exist, I’d still consider myself an atheist.
But my agnosticism comes from an acknowledgment of our fundamentally limited understanding of certain aspects of existence, and the implications of that specific lack of understanding.
It’s not as if I believe “well maybe the god of Abraham could be real after all but I don’t know” (it seems far more likely that if there’s a god, he/she/it/they are closer to being the stuff of existence than some standalone entity). It’s more that I withhold belief entirely and don’t make absolute claims that are philosophically untenable.
If we figure out how consciousness works or achieve breakthroughs in physics, I could imagine calling myself an atheist again. Until then, agnosticism seems like the most intellectually honest position.
> In practice, atheists are people who think they know there is no god.
Many atheists find a verdict of "not guilty" on the charge "that god exists". It's the equivalent of saying "I don't believe you." That's about it.
Saying "god does not exist" is a claim that itself has a burden of proof. Most people agree there is no need to provide proof that fairies and unicorns don't exist. If you think they do: show your evidence. The default position is to think they don't exist.
You’re mixing theism/atheism with gnosticism/agnosticism. They’re two separate axes.
> In practice, atheists are people who think they know there is no god.
This is generally labeled “gnostic atheism” or “strong atheism”, and only a teeny tiny fraction of people who identify as atheists take this view.
The way the vast majority of atheists use the term is as the complement set to theism. Theists believe in god(s). Atheists lack belief in gods. We don’t claim to know for certain, we just haven’t seen evidence that leads us to believe. (As you say, certainty level regarding any particular god varies depending on which one is in question.)
https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/
“Gnostic atheism” is a confusing choice of words because in the context of Christianity, "gnostic" already means something quite different:
>Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects. These diverse groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge above the teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
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That just seems to me a terribly flawed statement. I'm agnostic. Maybe there is a god, maybe there isn't, who am I to know? It always seems like incredible hubris to me when someone claims not only to know for certain one way or the other, but project their baseless beliefs onto others.
I can't 100% prove that I'm an atheist, so I'm definitely agnostic. The brain structure is constantly evolving and it's unclear how that exactly works. What is a "belief" any way, and what does it matter for?