agnostics, atheists, and theists

definitions and clarifications

atheists and agnostics can be called "nontheists."  if a theist is someone who believes in at least one deity, then a nontheist does not exactly fit this definition.

an agnostic is more "mild" than an atheist.  the agnostic simply does not know if a god exists, hence the term "agnostic," from the greek "no knowledge."  some agnostics, the more extreme kind, even claim that it is impossible to know whether or not gods exist.  there is a difference there.  if someone comes along and begins to spout theistic statements, the first kind of agnostic will shrug and cannot decide if the theist is right or wrong.  the more extreme agnostic is also not sure if the theist is right or wrong, but he or she is absolutely sure that the theist is making an unjustifiable, impossible-to-prove-or-disprove claim.  in both cases, the problem is that there is a lack of evidence from the agnostic's perspective to decide one way or the other.  the agnostic may be justified in this: there is something uncomfortable about believing an idea if there doesn't seem to be enough evidence to support it.

of course, there is nothing to stop an agnostic from practically (in practice) living life either as a theist or an atheist.  just because they are not sure does not mean that they don't lean one way or the other.  for example, scientists are not 100% sure whether some species of dinosaur were warm-blooded like birds or cold-blooded like reptiles, but paleontologists definitely lean one way or the other.  so just as scientists, even though the evidence does not lend itself to 100% certainty, tend to lean one way or another, there are agnostics who tend to be believers or nonbelievers.  it is often too difficult for humans to live completely neutrally and to commit to no side, except maybe for the swiss.

an atheist goes one more step and does not believe in the existence of a deity.  there is a mild kind that simply does not believe (some agnostics are mild atheists), and there is a more extreme kind that actively claims that it is impossible for a god to exist and actively lives his or her life in that manner.

a note:

some nontheists are open-minded enough to accept that even if it makes little scientific sense to believe in a deity, it does make artistic, practical, and "human" sense in ordering lives and priorities.  the problem, actually, is that some theists get all worked up about their religions and get in the way of global peaceful co-existence between species and races and genders and creeds and philosophies and lifestyles.  that's why so many nontheists get spooked by religious people and become nontheists to begin with!

believing in god is a form of atheism!

one should not be too hasty in judging "freethinking" people, as agnostics and atheists have taken to calling themselves.  just because one person is not sure about the existence of your deity (an agnostic) does not mean that person does not believe (is an atheist).  to claim that there is not evidence to be sure is not the same as to claim that there is no god.  and even if the person, like maximilian, seems to actively argue that it is philosophically and scientifically impossible to conclusively prove the existence of god (an extreme agnostic), it does not mean that person is an active atheist (in maximilian's case, he is an active theist and encourages others to turn to religion as a way to become fully human in the postmodern world).

and theists shouldn't be too quick to judge atheists, either.  why?  because people who believe in god and people who don't believe in god are similar kinds of people!  see, the funny thing is that most people who believe in one deity claim to be absolutely sure that all the other deities don't exist (at last count, there were millions of deities being worshipped on earth, quite a few of them from the pantheons of certain hindu sects where even individuals have their own gods or goddesses).  most christians are so sure that they know that zeus doesn't exist, and the average hindu doesn't think that there's much merit to believing in the god of abraham, isaac, and jacob.  so if theists do not believe in other gods, atheists do not believe in any gods.

some bad logicians make the faulty definition that an atheist is someone who knows that god does not exist.  while this is true to some extent for some atheists, atheism and agnosticism both stem from lack of evidence for the existence of god.  only a percentage actually claim to have conclusive evidence for the non-existence of god.

it is not the case that most nontheists have knowledge that god does not exist.  most nontheists just don't think there's enough evidence to point one way or the other, and therefore they tend to lean towards disbelief.

so to all unscrupulous theists out there who keep arguing by asking how atheists are sure that god does not exist in order to discredit, stop it.  there is often no claim that there is a body of evidence to disprove god, only a claim that the evidence presented by theistic philosophy is inadequate and that their theistic logic is faulty.  it makes no rational sense for one to make that leap of belief on such little scientific evidence.