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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 i

• SamReidHughes 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    No, that is exactly what it means. It doesnt take very long to look something up (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism 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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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 12y ago
        I am not making a point about the colloquial definition. The wikipedia article he linked disagrees with him too.
    • jasonkostempski 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        Many atheists and theists believe you can provide evidence one way or another. Most people are not agnostic.
    • SamReidHughes 12y ago
      There is a difference between saying you can prove something and saying you know something. Your own Wikipedia article disagrees with you.
  • staticshock 12y ago
    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/Agnosticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism
    • SamReidHughes 12y ago
      Saying you know something and saying you can prove something are two different things.
  • designNERD 12y ago
    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.
• qiqing 12y ago
  You can also be an Atheist Buddhist.
  • jackpirate 12y ago
    You can also be a Christian Atheist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism
• adrianlmm 12y ago
  No, you can't be an agnostic atheist, there is no such thing.
  • tlrobinson 12y ago
    Wikipedia, for one, would beg to differ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism
    • adrianlmm 12y ago
      That's interesting.
  • conception 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticis...
  • designNERD 12y ago
    Yes you can as I am one.
• tcskeptic 12y ago
  Right, and I would describe myself as an agnostic Christian. The claims of Christianity are ridiculous and unprovable, and I believe them.
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• gfodor 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    >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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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!
• lucisferre 12y ago
  Deist might be a more useful alternate choice than Agnostic then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism
• Dewie 12y ago
  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?
  • MichaelGG 12y ago
    Atheist is often an umbrella term for people that don't believe any sort of supernatural things, from an Abrahamic god to forest spirits.
  • MichaelGG 12y ago
    Atheist is often an umbrella term for people that don't believe any sort of supernatural things, from an Abrahamic god to forest spirits.
  • jonnathanson 12y ago
    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.
• hrasyid 12y ago
  You can check both
• mbell 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    Sounds like you'd fall into the Agnostic category by definition.