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this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Why agnostic? Like... If there's no proof, why believe in the existence of a deity at all?
For me personally, atheism is saying 'there is nothing more to the universe or reality, what you see is what you get' which is extremely pretentious. Agnosticism is admitting to the possibility that there's something going on here, but we don't know and would likely be incapable of understanding what it is.
So aliens.
I mean... No? Maybe? Certainly not aliens as in biologically evolved creatures from another planet are involved, what is so hard to understand about that? Alien as in something completely foreign and unrecognizable to the human brain, sure.
You'd agree with more atheists than you'd think with that comment.
Atheism just means without theism. If you aren't theist, you're atheist. Agnostic describes the position of lacking belief one way or the other. A lack of belief is not the same as a belief in a lack. The vast majority of atheists are agnostic atheists, because the belief that there are positively no deities is just as baseless as the claim that there are deities.
Theism is belief in gods; atheism is the opposite of that: non-belief in gods.
Gnosticism is knowledge of gods; agnosticism is the opposite of that: no knowledge of gods. (There is also a religious movement called gnosticism. That doesn't relate here.)
The first is about belief and the second is about knowledge.
These are not incompatible. You can believe in something and claim to have knowledge of it (gnostic theism) or you can believe and claim to not have knowledge of it (agnostic theism). I have encountered Christians of both varieties.
For atheists, many (perhaps most) claim to have no knowledge of gods (agnostic atheism), and some claim that gods certainly do not exist (gnostic atheism). The latter demonstrate that the Christian exist, because logically an omniscient and omnipotent God can't also be omni-benevolent, since suffering obviously exists.
I think we largely agree. Your comment is essentially a restatement of my point. Theism is a belief that they are gods, and atheism is a lack of belief that there are gods. That lack of belief can either come from a positive belief that there are no gods, or a withholding of belief one way or the other.
Speaking about myself specifically, it is equally untrue to say that I believe there are gods as it is to say that I believe there are no gods. The former means I am an atheist, and the latter means I am an agnostic. Both labels apply to me.
I was an agnostic for a very long time.
My main view of things - I couldn't know if there was a god or if there wasn't. But all that ultimate judgement shit never made any sense for me. If you're just behaving decently because of fear of ultimate judgment, then you're not a decent person. Ok if god would want me not to be an asshole, I'd need to be that out of my free will. And if a god demanded adherence to some random rules out of the blue - that god wouldn't have a moral compass and I wouldn't want to have to do anything with them in my life, being smitten down at the end would have been a consequence for me anyways.
I just want to be no asshole. So the question of there's a god or not. I don't care. God is irrelevant.
Thus: agnostic
I started staying I'm an atheist somw time ago, as that's just quicker and I can go by without explaining.
Still - if there's a god around, which is possible but improbable - I'm making sure I make fucking good use of the free will they gave me.
The issue I had with calling myself "agnostic" is that most Christians think of it as "undecided" (which it isn't), so they'll try to convert you. If you tell them you're an atheist, they're more likely to leave you alone (in my experience).
But agnostics don't believe in the existence of a deity. Are you maybe confusing it with deism?
You can be an agnostic deist. Agnostic just means you have no firm belief. Most people who identify as "nones" in polls are technically agnostic, even if they personally believe in a higher power. Its a lack of certainty.
Most atheists are also technically agnostic atheists. A gnostic athiest would be someone who holds the absence of any higher being or spirituality as an almost axiomatic belief. Though they merely can be so certain that the small chance they're wrong seems irrelevant to them.
For simplicity, I've always explained agnosticism as the belief that "I don't know and neither do you".
Agnosticism isn't a lack of certainty; it's a lack of knowledge. I am agnostic about many, many things. For example, Bigfoot. I haven't seen any good evidence for the existence of Bigfoot (i.e., I have no knowledge of the existence of Bigfoot), so I don't believe in Bigfoot. I'm the same way with the existence of gods.
I've always considered agnostics to be atheists who just don't wanna debate. At least that's why I used to call myself an agnostic when I was younger.
I used to say agnostic because at that point all the atheist discussion I saw in public was aggressively anti-theistic, and I found it equally stupid to very strongly believe in either direction about things there's simply no way to know. Now I just say atheist because it doesn't mean only "I hate religion with passion" anymore
i call myself a devout agnostic. the justaposition of those words is inherently absurd since part of agnosticism and identifying as such is believing there is value to studying theology even if you yourself don't believe the theologies you're studying because ultimately prior to colonization, religion was how groups of people encoded and passed along their wisdom. however saying "devout agnostic" throws people enough off balance enough to introduce them to these concepts since so many say with their whole chest that they're something when traditionally these terms have meant something else to the people who use them.
for example, an astounding (at least to me) number of people say quakers and unitarians aren't christians. when you dig down on this you often find that this position is rooted in a believe (both positive and negative) that the fundamental mechanism and experience of christianity is trauma. however, when you look at the broader world of religion, you find that that's mostly only Christian denominations rooted in the theologies of the roman empire such as roman catholicism and the various european orthodoxies like Greek and russian. however, the oldest denomination, Ethiopian Orthodox, would i think to the people who say quakers and unitarians aren't christians, seem very unchistian. for that matter, i think so would Native America Christianity, Oriental Orthodox, and Armenianism. (fun fact, the Unitarian church is rooted in Oriental Orthodox, which is either the second or third oldest christian denomination)
Devotion to agnosticism is beautiful.
To me, it means I will passionately defend another person's right to remain "undecided" on all things spiritual.
It can be surprisingly effective in some circles.
i will also strongly defend their right to have faith in something that gives them the strength to get through this messed wp world. i will simply brook no bullshit from anyone who use their theological positions for control, and that includes authoritarian atheists.
Eh, I think there's a decent semantic dispute for it. It's of course dependent on your definition of deity and is mostly an exercise of pedantry. However, with the size of the universe I think there's a pretty decent chance that there exists an intellectual being that could be interpreted as being god-like to the human perspective.
Now I'm not making claims that this proposed being has ever had anything to do with humans, nor are they responsible for any universal creation. Just that the universe is big enough for the existence of something significantly more advanced than humans. That being said, the size of the universe that allows for the possibility of this proposal also makes it possible existence mostly pedantic.
We might be early, from how i understand the age of the universe. If we don’t great filter ourselves out of existence soon we may become the elder species. The universe is remarkably young
Atheism is just another belief
Reading comprehension ain't your strong suit, is it?
What's the proof that there is no deity at all?
I rest my case
It's impossible to prove a negative, but if you were as clever as you think you are, you'd already know that
I'm not even going to bother with the whole "burden of proof" thing because I don't think you're capable of understanding it
It's funny how you act like the stereotypical arrogant atheist who thinks of himself better because of his believe and everyone else is just too dumb to understand.
There are still so many wonderous mystical things left. A lot of them we will never be able to understand because they are so much bigger than us
It's impossible to prove the existence of a higher deity as well because it's part of its definition to not be proveable/observable/understandable to our minds.
Not everyone
You.