I believe “atheist” usually refers to a person who believes that there is no God, which is distinct from a person who does not believe there is a God (one is a belief in a negation, the other is a negation of a belief).
The difference is that a person who believes there is no God, cannot conceive of a world where God exists without updating their belief. On the other hand a person who does not believe there is a God can conceive of at least some world where there is no God without updating their belief, but might also be able to conceive a world where there is a God.
If a “theist” is someone who believes there is a God, then someone who is not a theist is either an atheist or an agnost (i.e. someone who does not believe there is no God, but also does not believe there is a God).
I think that “agnost” is not a widely used word, but I understand the intention of relating to the word “agnostic”.
However, I think that the word “agnostic” has been defined and used in different ways, so that the categorization of people’s beliefs may go beyond simply “theist”, “atheist”, and “agnostic”.
One definition for “agnostic” in the specific belief that the existence of God in unknown and possibly even unknowable. Others have used “agnostic” in a broader sense to include those that are simply unsure about the existence of God.
I think the former definition is significantly more narrow, and when using words like “agnostic” and “agnost”, there could be some ambiguity as to whether this more narrow meaning is intended, or if the broader sense is the intention.
Of course, the context of your usage seems to clarify that “theist” and “atheist” are non-overlapping, and that “agnost” seems to defined as including everyone else not belonging to those prior two categories.
Putting on my pedant hat: (believe in non-existence of x) implies (not believe in existence of x).
So does this mean that every atheist is also agnostic?
It depends on how you define “agnostic”. If you define “agnostic” as simply “not having a belief in the existence of God”, then yes. However, I think it would be more reasonable to define “agnostic” as also requiring “not having a belief in the non-existence of God”.
I think that one of @Vsotvep’s points is that “belief in non-existence of God” is specifically stronger than “unsure about the existence of God”, even though it does imply “no belief in the existence of God”.
Consider the following definitions of a god.
A. An entity that created the universe, but doesn’t interact with it.
B. An entity that has superior (supernatural) control on at least part of the universe.
C. An entity that created the universe, and which has superior control on at least part of the universe.
Atheists believe that A, B, and C don’t exist.
Agnostics are not sure whether A or C exist or not. Does agnosticism say anything about B?
I mean, while I consider myself an atheist for all practical purposes, I do believe that B can be satisfied by other forms of intelligence in the universe that we have not discovered yet. For instance, from the perspective of an ant, I think it is arguable that humans satisfy “B”.
In this regard, as I believe it is statistically unlikely that we are the most intelligent life form in the universe, I believe that there are beings in the universe that have an amount of control over their environment that would be akin to supernatural in comparison to our understanding of the universe.
Anyway if billions of other civilizations exist in the universe, we are so insignificant that I doubt any superior entity will care to interact with us.
It could be argued that in order to have the audacity to make a religion (of any kind/category), you have to be agnostic enough in order to gamble that there is no other God that might get angry at your blashphemy.
The ancient Greeks thought about that issue and to cover up their bases they had a shrine dedicated to “the unknown God”.
I’d say that the folks that came up with Serapis, were either totally agnostic, or very certain that there is no God, else they wouldn’t have had the guts to attempt something like that.
Really? Wow. This hasn’t been my experience. The old testament is well loved, in fact, it is the “scripture” of which Paul writes “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
The distinction between the focus of the two testaments is quite simple. The old testament is looking forward towards Jesus’s death on the cross. The new testament is looking back at His Resurrection.
Given the literally ground breaking nature of those two events, it makes sense that we understood and talked about the nature of God differently before and after them.
Well, Leviticus is very clear on what “God wants” as general offerings or to forgive you and it usually involves some animal cruelty. Jesus on the other hand is much more forgiving and without any offerings.
Noone in Christianity practices that or even goes there much. No pastor, not even the most wildly pious, even the ones that use the Bible as an excuse for their own hatred (you know the kind I am talking about), none of them ever said… “yeah, maybe we should build an altar…”
None. Zero. And thank God for that!
Why?
I am being honest here, not ironic in the least.
I can understand Jesus being adored for a lot of his sermons and philosophy, even by non-religious people, but what is in the Old Testament that could make it “well loved”?
If I remember correctly the Old Testament is a wild wild book. Animal violence does not even top the top-10 list on the kinds of nasty stuff that happen in there.
Paul is another issue for another day. A lot of people are worried that some denominations are not exactly “Christian”, but “Paulian”.
Yes, that’s why I said it is mostly used as a “setting” to explain to other people across the world what a Messiah is. But other than that…
Weeeeell, at some points things in New Testament seem to just happen to fulfill some obscure prophecy or saying of Isaiah, but to tie it back down with the “prescience” issue, Jesus at some point - in the Last supper iirc - prays to His Father to be spared from this ordeal (“may this cup be taken from me” or something like that) and later on the cross Jesus asks from His Father to forgive all those people for they do not know what they are doing. This sheds some doubt about what is exactly going on and how far into the past and future this is planned or being ad-libed.
I took the religious teacher on a wild trip when I asked at school whether “Judas is in heaven or not?” since apparently it was God’s plan to proceed that way, so why would Judas - a mere instrument of God’s will in this case - be punished?
Also, all those people that crucified Jesus, per God’s plan as the New Testament implies, shouldn’t they be thanked (if not revered) for going along the divine plan?
Ground breaking and mind-boggling events, for sure.
You got there first hehe
Edit: Actually I don’t think that any of them are followed nowadays. Most of that stuff is really wild.
On the other hand, funny enough, direct orders from Jesus are also not followed by many denominations. E.g. Jesus in the last supper was very clear on what to do to honor his memory. The Holy Communion is an effort to do that and replicate what Jesus said in some way. However, how many denominations have tossed it out or changed it or put their own spin or just replaced it with something totally different?
Jesus said to rich people to give away their money and land to the poor?
Clergy and pastors world-wide go crazy for those tax-exemptions and dream of mansions and jets.
Let’s forget for a minute about separation of Church and State, I think the first thing believers should look into is the separation between Church and God.
To me there is no clear distinction between “believing there is no god” and “not believing there is a god”. IMO “believing something is false” means thinking it is false without having indisputable proof, while “not believing something is true” means not thinking it is true without having indisputable proof.
In practice, is there really much difference between saying “I think there is no god” and “I don’t think there is a god”?
I don’t know if the universe started on its own, or if some sapient entity was involved. So I can’t rule out A. Also I don’t know if life started on its own (abiogenesis), or if some sapient entity had a hand in it.
But for now, my assumption (belief) is that both started on their own and we’ll eventually figure out how it went (if we haven’t made ourselves extinct before that).
As for B, I’m not sure to how interpret “supernatural”. When someone from 2000 years ago would time-travel to today, they might think that some of humanity’s technological achievements are supernatural, but they aren’t.
Some physical phenomena may not be explained by the laws of nature that we discovered sofar. We are even continually aware of phenomena that challenge our understanding of the universe, like currently “dark matter” and “dark energy”. But does it mean those phenomena are “supernatural”? For now I assume (believe) they aren’t, and we’ll figure those out over time.
The universe is very old and huge, so there may well exist sapient entities in the universe whose capabilities seem almost omnipotent to us. But I see no reason to assume (believe) that such entities would care about humans and listen to their prayers, because I don’t see evidence of that. I cannot rule it out completely, but I think it’s highly unlikely.
As for C (a combination of A and B), it is logically less likely than A or B on their own. Still, it’s not impossible I suppose.
So perhaps you might say I’m agnostic, because I don’t rule out the possibilty that a god or gods exist. But I still feel pretty convinced there is no god or gods, and I think “atheist” describes that degree of certainty more closely than “agnostic” does. Living my life, I don’t account for the possibility that there is a god who judges me when I die and decides about my afterlife. I assume there is no afterlife.
Also here I don’t see much difference between saying that I do not believe there is an afterlife, or saying I believe there is no afterlife.
Even if we never can figure them out that wouldn’t necessarily mean they are super-natural. We may just be too dumb or the laws of nature themselves may mean we can never gather enough data.
I think that there is a subtle issue of language usage. Consider if we were instead talking about some hypothetical sub-atomic particle, which is predicted by some theoretical models, but denied by other theories. Suppose the experimental results so far are somewhat inconclusive as to which theories may be potentially correct or ruled out, leaving a lack of scientific consensus on the matter.
Maybe there is some group of scientists that firmly believe that the particle exists, based on their interpretation and analysis of the experimental results.
There may be another group of scientists that firmly believe that the particle does not exist, since they apply a different sort of analysis of the data, while claiming flaws in the analytical methods of the other group.
Further, there may also be yet another group that finds all of the experiments to be inconclusive, due to statistical uncertainties and perhaps some experimental flaws, so perhaps they do not believe in either existence nor non-existence of the particle, and are instead uncertain on the matter.
There is a big problem in our local theology that a strong belief/prayer can lead to miracles (we laugh at the young people on social media believing in “manifestation”, but it is also somehow religious dogma, as long as “it comes from God” ).
I’d say that there are trully some things in life that can look like “divine provinance”, so I am open to that idea and let’s grant the proposition that miracles exist and the God does indeed respond to some people’s prayers.
Now the problems begin: a) Why God is helping those people and not others? We are all made in His image, so what’s the deal here? b) Is God playing favorites or are these people just better than us? c) In which case what do these people do/have that others do/have not? How can we be like them? c+) So, if there are things you can do and qualities you can have in order to be “God’s favorite”, then what are those? I’d say a list like that would have been far more useful than most of the Holy Scriptures, eh? d) By which measure one person’s miracle is another one’s plight (e.g. someone prayed for the forest fire to spare his house. God said “ok” and the fire burned the neighbour’s house or the rest of the town) and how is that fair? e) What are the limits of God’s grace? We can’t treat God as “djinn of the lamp” and ask for whatever? We need to be respectful and ask/pray for “good things”. So, what are they?
And so forth… Sunday school was so much fun… they had no definitive answers to any of that, but they tried… which led to more questions. I bet they prayed that I’d go away or, at least, shut up, at some point, but God seems to have said “No”.
Perhaps a less abstract way to compare these, is to use the example of whether it is raining in Johannesburg (where none of us are, I presume).
If I were to ask you if you believe it is raining in Johannesburg, you would answer “no”, since you have no idea. But it would be incorrect to then claim that you believe it is not raining in Johannesburg.
That is, there is a distinction between not believing it rains in Johannesburg, and believing it does not rain in Johannesburg.
