Agnostic to the sense of there might be some weird higher power or complex layering of reality - when theists hear agnostic though they think ‘oh they’re fifty-fifty on the Christian God of the Bible’ which I really don’t think is the case for most atheists. I know I’d sooner believe in pretty much anything before the paradoxical absurdity which backs the Abrahamic faiths.
I identify as an agnostic atheist in exactly this way. We don’t know, based on our current understanding, whether there is something that ‘created’ the universe, or not. That being said, I am 99.999 percent certain that no human myth about gods has ever been remotely close to the truth of reality. The Abrahamic myths are so lacking in any sort of proof that they are obviously fiction.
That’s the thing. Any human depiction of god is almost immediately disprovable because it makes supernatural claims, but the idea that there could be something out there isn’t. (We very well could be living in a simulation, and there are even some mathematical arguments that suggest we’re almost certainly in one.)
It’s a pretty bad word tbh because people have varying things they read into it, just like “atheist.” I’ve heard an old religious family member say that agnostic people believe in God/Jesus but don’t like organized religion.
The definitions that make the most sense to me are that theism/atheism is about what you believe, and gnosticism/agnosticism is about what you claim to know.
This thread made me go see what the dictionary definitions of the words are these days, and I saw that M-W not only has pretty clear definitions, but has a little write up on the terms:
“How Agnostic Differs From Atheist
Many people are interested in distinguishing between the words agnostic and atheist. The difference is quite simple: atheist refers to someone who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods, and agnosticrefers to someone who doesn’t know whether there is a god, or even if such a thing is knowable. This distinction can be troublesome to remember, but examining the origins of the two words can help.”
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Agnostic to the sense of there might be some weird higher power or complex layering of reality - when theists hear agnostic though they think ‘oh they’re fifty-fifty on the Christian God of the Bible’ which I really don’t think is the case for most atheists. I know I’d sooner believe in pretty much anything before the paradoxical absurdity which backs the Abrahamic faiths.
I identify as an agnostic atheist in exactly this way. We don’t know, based on our current understanding, whether there is something that ‘created’ the universe, or not. That being said, I am 99.999 percent certain that no human myth about gods has ever been remotely close to the truth of reality. The Abrahamic myths are so lacking in any sort of proof that they are obviously fiction.
That’s the thing. Any human depiction of god is almost immediately disprovable because it makes supernatural claims, but the idea that there could be something out there isn’t. (We very well could be living in a simulation, and there are even some mathematical arguments that suggest we’re almost certainly in one.)
It’s a pretty bad word tbh because people have varying things they read into it, just like “atheist.” I’ve heard an old religious family member say that agnostic people believe in God/Jesus but don’t like organized religion.
The definitions that make the most sense to me are that theism/atheism is about what you believe, and gnosticism/agnosticism is about what you claim to know.
This thread made me go see what the dictionary definitions of the words are these days, and I saw that M-W not only has pretty clear definitions, but has a little write up on the terms:
“How Agnostic Differs From Atheist
Many people are interested in distinguishing between the words agnostic and atheist. The difference is quite simple: atheist refers to someone who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods, and agnosticrefers to someone who doesn’t know whether there is a god, or even if such a thing is knowable. This distinction can be troublesome to remember, but examining the origins of the two words can help.”