Are agnostics either theists or atheists?

They are, by definition, neither.

They’re wimpy athiests, IMO. I identified as an agnostic for a couple of years before I got the courage to recognize myself as an atheist.

@SavoirFaire, I believe that are incorrect on this occasion.

Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. Another definition provided is the view that “human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist.”

Every agnostic either believes in god(s) or does not.

Well, you tell me. I am perfectly willing to accept the existence of a god if it can be proven scientifically that there is a god. I don’t actively believe or contrary-wise disbelieve anything. Something is either proven or unproven. So in my worldview there is no god until there is proven to be a god.

(Although to take it one step further, if it CAN be proven scientifically that there is a god, then it can be explained by science, so ipso facto it’s not a god). Savoir Faire, as our resident philosopher, can tell me what kind of thinking that is.

@doyendroll Merely lacking a belief in any god or gods is not sufficient to make one an atheist, so your conclusion does not follow.

@Caravanfan If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you believe neither “god exists” nor “god does not exist.” Instead, you are withholding your judgment until you are presented with something that you take to be an adequate proof one way or the other. That would make you an agnostic according to the standard definition of the term.

I think of agnostics as being unsure if there is a God or not.

My guess is people who identify as agnostic vary in how they define the possibility of God or whether God is a part of their life at all in any way.

The only way to know how a specific person who identifies as agnostic really views God is to ask that person.

@SavoirFaire Well, sorta kinda yes. However, I’m also reasonably convinced that there will never be scientific proof of a god, so I can reasonably short hand that into “I don’t believe in God”. But that’s not very rigorous, and I really try to be rigorous in my thinking. I consider myself to be a hard atheist, but as I said if presented with evidence to the contrary I will change my mind. Does that make sense?

But correct, by rigorous definition I would be an agnostic.

The word “believe” is the definition here. I am atheistic because I don’t believe. If I am wrong, – that will be determined in some unknowable future.
I do “believe” that “if” there is a God, It will know why I don’t, so agnostic might apply

I consider myself an agnostic-atheist because both have to do with two things: what I know and what I believe. So picking between the two labels seems kind of ridiculous to me.

@SavoirFaire your “lacking a belief in any god or gods” is precisely the dictionary definition of atheism therefore, with respect, I impugn that part of your contention. Some people don’t realise that they either believe or do not believe in god(s). Truth and beauty is everywhere pantheists might say.

Yes.

But no.

Let’s consider the varieties of belief and disbelief.

One type would be someone who claims to feel the presence of God. Such a person would be a theist but not an agnostic.

Next there are those who do not claim to directly perceive the presence of God, but who believe that the world is such that there must be a God. These people are also theists but not agnostics.

Then there are those who do not know for certain whether or not there is a God, but who lean in one direction or the other. These people may be regarded as agnostics and also either theists or atheists, depending on which direction they lean.

There are people who simply do not know if there is a God and don’t think it will ever be possible to know for sure. These people are agnostics and not theists or atheists.

There are people who claim to know for certain that there is no God. They are atheists and not agnostics.

Finally there are those who think that it makes no difference whether or not there is a God. They are called apatheists. They may be regarded as agnostics, but are not theists or atheists.

@LostInParadise

That’s probably the biggest misconception of the definition of atheism. The real definition of atheism is the lack of a belief in God. The root of the word literally means “without religion”

@SavoirFaire You really don’t like atheists avoiding any supposed burden of proof don’t you.

@LostInParadise Hopefully I didn’t misinterpret what you were saying

There are different definitions. Check out the first paragraph of this Wikipedia article.

The problem with saying that atheism is a lack of belief in God is that it makes it seem as if deism is the norm and any departure from it is an aberration. Having 3 distinct categories puts each type of belief on an equal footing. You can believe one way, believe in the opposite way, or be neutral.

We could use a new word to split theists into two groups. In the U.S., there are about as many people without religion, overwhelmingly theists, as there are Catholics. We could use a word to distinguish those theists who have a religion from those who do not.

Well, it’s interesting to me that we can’t agree on a definition. :)

On one hand, I wonder about the use of a term like “agnosticism”. It seems to me an intellectual position that people take to appear rational: i.e. theism and atheism require “belief” whereas agnosticism is simply the position that the existence of God can’t be proven or disproven with reason alone. But I think most of us, even those who identify as “agnostic” live our lives as if a God exists or doesn’t exist, even if we acknowledge we can’t know for sure, and how many really claim to know God exists or not? Some theists may claim to know for sure, but others would say that would require the kind of knowledge that would make faith useless. The very necessity of faith means that we will never know for sure. Likewise, there are some atheists who are convinced they’ve disproven the existence of any deity, but others who see no reason to believe in one and do not find the arguments for one convincing, but still acknowledge that they can’t disprove the existence of something metaphysical and unknowable.

They are, in effect, IMO, a sort of theist because they refuse to rule out completely the existence of a “God” or other supreme being. But since they question that existence, they are, in reality, agnostic.

As I see it, an agnostic, generally speaking, does not believe in “God” for all the same reasons a atheist does, but, because of the vastness of the universe, and all of it’s unknowns, believes that the existence of “God” may yet exist in some form, in some dimension. So the agnostic, generally speaking, cannot draw the final conclusion that an atheist would or might, that there is no “God.”

@Caravanfan Yes, I think that makes sense. And it’s important to have a shorthand for the many circumstances in which rigor just isn’t the most important thing.

@doyendroll “Your ‘lacking a belief in any god or gods’ is precisely the dictionary definition of atheism.”

First, there’s no such thing as “the” dictionary definition of atheism. There are many dictionaries, and thus many dictionary definitions. Indeed, the first dictionary I checked right now has this as it’s primary definition of the word: “the doctrine or belief that there is no God.”

Second, appealing to dictionaries is fallacious when debating how a word is best used. I am quite aware that people use the word “atheism” in different ways (some stricter, some looser, some narrower, some broader), and I am quite aware that any good dictionary will acknowledge these uses (the whole point of a dictionary, after all, is to be descriptive rather prescriptive). Indeed, we wouldn’t even be having this debate were it not for the fact that people use the word in other ways. But while dictionaries are a perfectly good place to start when trying to understand a word, they are most certainly not ending points. And as such, they are terrible sources for mediating disputes.

@rockfan “The root of the word literally means ‘without religion’”

Appealing to etymology is also fallacious when debating how a word is best used, but it’s particularly bad when you don’t even have the etymology correct. The “a-” in “atheism,” known as alpha privative, can express both “without” and “against.” This is true in English, but it is also true in ancient Greek (which is the relevant source language in this case). And while there may be no difference in some cases, negation in ancient Greek is not always the same as mere absence. This is how we get opposing pairs such as οσιος (pious/holy) and ανοσιος (impious/unholy), where ανοσιος is not merely a lack of piety but a state of actual wickedness.

@Kropotkin “You really don’t like atheists avoiding any supposed burden of proof don’t you.”

I don’t like when people who make positive claims try to shift or avoid the burden of proof by pretending that they are not making positive claims or by equivocating between different uses of a word, which happens frequently when loose definitions of the word “atheism” are used in situations where strict definitions are called for (e.g., on discussion forums). I am also not a fan of using words in ways that are redundant or that many people will misunderstand when perfectly good alternatives already exist that avoid both problems (i.e., “non-theist”).

I get that there are different uses of the word and different linguistic communities that have certain preferences. That doesn’t mean I have to ignore the logically illicit uses to which those preferences are often put.

You really don’t like atheists avoiding any supposed burden of proof don’t you. Is he suggesting we’re supposed to somehow prove there is no God?

This question may be unclear, but maybe not. And after all the responses so far I’m not sure the answers are right…but I’m not sure they’re wrong either.

I think I’m an asknostic.

@SavoirFaire “lacking a belief in any god or gods is not sufficient to make one an atheist,”

lol

You either know that there are gods (gnostic) or don’t (agnostic) and you either believe in gods (theist) or you don’t (atheist).

Here is another way of framing this discussion. Belief is not a matter of what we say, but of how we live our lives. As the old saying goes, Actions speak louder than words. If someone says that they think it is wrong to tell lies but is also a habitual liar, then we can say that their actual belief is based on what they do and not what they say they believe. Similarly, if someone says they believe in God but does not follow any religion and does not in any way make use of their belief in God in how they live, then there is no real difference between them and agnostics.

The only significant distinction would be between practicing theists and everybody else.

@doyendroll Like I said to @rockfan: appealing to etymology is fallacious when debating how a word is best used, but it’s particularly bad when you don’t even have the etymology correct. Unlike “atheist,” which goes back to ancient Greece, “agnostic” was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 with the explicit intention of describing a view that was committed to neither theism nor atheism. Furthermore, Huxley chose the term in part because he thought that truth about God’s existence was unknowable. In other words, his own reason for thinking we are “without knowledge” in this area was that he believed such knowledge to be unobtainable.

Thinking that God’s existence or non-existence is unknowable is not the only way to be an agnostic, of course, and Huxley himself did not try to limit the word in that way. Instead, the key elements of agnosticism as traditionally understood are that one has thought about the issue (thus distinguishing agnostics from those who have never even considered the question of God’s existence, such as newborn infants) and that one has decided not to take a side (described in more formal language as “suspending judgment”).

Note that understanding the word “agnosticism” in this way also maintains the intelligibility of other contexts in which the term is used to convey an intentionally noncommittal attitude toward something, such as an investigator being agnostic about which suspect committed a particular crime in the face of insufficient evidence. If the investigator says “I am agnostic about whether it was Greg or Steve who killed Jimmy,” they aren’t saying “I think it was Greg, but I don’t know that it was Greg.” They are saying “I have no stance with regard to whether it was Greg or Steve,” which is to say that they are suspending judgment with regard to which one committed the crime.

Any competent user of the English language understands this expanded usage of the word, yet that usage conforms to the definition that I have advocated for rather than the one that you (and @rockfan) have insisted upon.