To me it a difference without any real meaning.  The question to me is does the possibility of a God affect how you live your life.  If the answer is no then whether you an Atheist or Agnostic dont really matter since the end result is the same.  If the answer is Yes then weather you an Theist or Agnostic the results again is the same.

In other words

I don't know if there a god but just in case am going to do X is essentially the same as believing in that god since the actions you take is the same

and

I don't know if there a god but I not going to change my life just in case there is a god is essentially the same as being an Atheist since your actions going to be the same.

After skimming through this thread, I really can't tell that much difference between atheists and theists. Both are based on faith. Both have plenty of arrogant assholes who seem to feel the need to preach their beliefs at others. Horseshoe theory, I guess.

I don't want to be lumped in with either one. Please don't try to include agnostic with atheist.

Responding to @Cyran and expanding on my own post:

What I would say is that (from my POV) explains the distinction between irreligion and religion. And, I personally don’t conflate irreligion vs religion with atheism vs theism. This is something I touch on in my last post, using the academic vs vocational study → to many, school is school, and it has a the same outcome; but, there are fundamental differences between the foundation of academic studies and vocational studies, and (to others) this is of extreme importance and relevance. I consider myself an irreligious agnostic. So, functionally, not too different from an atheist from people who don’t care about the philosophical foundations; but, entirely different structures with a distinction of foundational importance for those of us who do.

So, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your position, just that I think our priorities are very different on this subject, so we approach it differently.

And (back and adding to my Hitchens example - which I want to add to) it’s highly unlikely TH Huxley was compromising either, that’s a straw-man by Hitchens → don’t get me wrong, I agree with a large amount of the work of Hitchens (mostly political), but this is one area where I don’t find his views compelling. If Huxley was compromising, the man (Huxley) who they call “Darwin’s bulldog” certainly had an interesting way of showing it with his anti-religious sentiments. Huxley often went further than the atheists on the anti-religiosity: were it a few centuries earlier, he’d be first to be burned by the inquisition. Huxley was a skeptic, not a compromiser.


I’d be interested in your background in terms of religion exposure. To give my own background: I was barely exposed to religion until my late teens - my parents are both atheists, my grandparents and great grandparents were all atheists and/or irreligious. And, before I became wiser to reality, assumed that religion (as it existed) was the vestiges of archaic culture… kind of like old poems, songs, or stories.

Does it take faith to not believe in astrology?

To be clear I was not taking Hitchens position that agnostic is a compromise.  Rather they are distinct in nature and explain different things.  Atheist is about belief while Agnostic is about knowing.

I would consider myself Agnostic Atheist but I usually just leave off the Agnostic because it tend to only confuse people.  I do not have belief in a god but I also acknowledge it is impossible to know whether there is a god or not a god.

For the purposes of this topic I was saying whether you Agnostic or not is not a important distinction, because your belief is what will determine action while a debate on probability of a god is more academic than anything else.  

Of course if our definition of the words differ then that changes things so it sound like we more differ in definition then in substance.

As for my background I grew up in a Reform Jewish household so not super religious but definitely my parents believed in god but took the view more that the Old Testament was given by God to teach lessons rather than be taken completely literal so I was encourage to learn as much about science as possible and while I was force to go to Hebrew school and Temple I was never punish for expressing my personal disbelief (by my parents at hebrew school they was less happy about some of my questions).

Religion never made sense to me and I also grew up a huge fantasy fan from RA Salvatore to JR Tolkien etc and to me when I read these religion story they was no difference then the fantasy stories that I knew was made up.  I did find the stories interesting and read stories from many mythology and religions and I came to the same conclusion that it was likely written by men no different then the fantasy books I read.

Around the age 14 I read the Selfish Gene by Stephen Dawkins which is probably when I started to have a fully understanding that I was am Athiest.  From there I started reading many books from other scientists.  Physics interest me the most so people like Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawkins, Brian Greene etc.

That is blatantly false.
Atheism is NOT based on "faith". - Faith by it's definition is blind belief without evidence.

Atheism is literally the REJECTION of "faith" because the burden of evidence has not been met.

That's all there is to it. 

They are literal polar opposites, if you are unable to discern the differences between Theism and Atheism, then you likely haven't studied the fundamental differences between the two.

Agnostic is different from Atheism, but you can also be an Agnostic Atheist, they are not mutually exclusive.

I find people tend to leverage the Old Testament to attack various demographics when it suits. I.E. Homosexuality in Leviticus... But will reject the Old Testament when it's inconvenient. I.E. Stoning unruly children to death in Deuteronomy.
They are hypocrites.
And then you get the truly bible-bashing nut jobs who believe in the Old Testament in a literal fashion: See 7th day Adventists.

Honestly, I just cannot take the "God exists, God is loving" claim seriously when I have had to carry a dead child to their parents.

No loving God would allow a child to suffer and die a horrific and gruesome death... And if you disagree with that, then you support narcissism.

@Cyran Sorry, that bit about adding to my Hitchens point was more of a tangent than anything, I probably should have just edited my earlier post.

Have you read Bertrand Russell? You might like his work quite a lot.

But onto my reply: I forget who it was (Sam Harris?) saying that agnosticism wasn't an important distinction because theism and atheism were about belief, and agnosticism was about knowledge. But if it was Harris, he would go on to conclude atheism itself wasn't an important distinction simply because you don't have labels for absence of something in other cases, like you don't label someone who doesn't play golf as a non-golfer, the term "golfer" is the only important distinction.

My position would be something like Harris's, but for a different reason. I do think the labels are important, but agnostic stance I take is something like (Agnostic Theist)+(Agnostic Atheist) and then the Atheist/Theist terms just cancel each other out. But, it's deeper than that, because Agnostic Deism, Agnostic Simulation Hypothesist, and other things are labels I could have. Depending on who you talk to, they can be considered theistic, atheistic, or something else. But, the main theme of my position is the lack of knowledge, and that is the essence of my "belief" system/philosophical position.

The common theme between atheism, agnosticism, agnostic atheism, and even deism, is irreligion. And in practicality, I think that I would agree with you on that.

The reason I asked about background is simple curiosity. We are both irreligious, but concluded on two separate paradigms on how we understand this (if it's deeper than just semantical differences). So, I came from the atheist side by default before I approached a position; and, you came from a religious background, and discovered atheism on your own, through reading and rational thought. I don't know if it has much of an influence, but maybe. I didn't begin to really think about it until my late teens when I realized "hey, there are people who actually believe in religion!" and didn't seriously consider the question and its answers until my twenties... probably quite a bit later than most.

On a side note. I read a lot of the same books that you did growing up - Salvatore and Tolkien, that is. And I sort of thought of religion the exact same way you did, probably for similar reasons. I don't quite recall how I came around to a hard agnostic take, but it was probably when I got into the sciences and classics; a mix of Plato, Einstein, and Hawking.

And just to add onto my earlier experiences. I did have an interest in the old cultures when I was a child. Those Roman and Greek ruins, the ancient cathedrals, and I imagined that there was some relationship of culture, that all these figures were part of the same story rather than competing stories... but at the same time, had it in my head "this was before people knew better." - but again, as I noted before, I didn't really know many religious people growing up, and when I met them, I saw religion as something like "these people just have different clothing and different languages/accents" as me, I didn't really consider that they had a fundamental different understanding of reality until probably my late teens.


Anyone else in this thread brought up irreligious or atheist?

@Pemalite

Agnostic Atheism, a very good example is Bertrand Russell, who I brought up in my last post. His definition is that he's an agnostic, but defaults to the atheist position because of the lack of evidence for any kind of gods.

I think everyone on the irreligious side will enjoy this lecture.

On the Old Testament cherry picking. When it comes to Christianity, this is one of the things Jesus harshly criticizes in the New Testament Gospels. So, it's quite interesting that the fanatical side of Christianity continue to behave the way of the New Testament biblical antagonists.

Anyway, I'll add (generally for this thread), because I didn't actually know the structure of the Bible until I was in my 20s, and if I didn't develop an interest in reading it, might have never understood it. The New Testament is split up into four sections:

1. The Gospels - these are the core books of the New Testament, there are four of them. Four different biographies of Jesus, stories that feature Jesus as a character, including his words and quotes. The Gospels are split into the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) which are roughly retellings of the same story, Mark is IMO the best one to read first - many will say that it's because it's the simplest, but I found it's because it's the sharpest. Matthew is the most dramatic of the three. Luke is the most extensive and developed of the three (plus, it is the one you would read with Acts, same author/redactor). The Gospel of John is more on the philosophical side, and far more Greek and interpretive.

2. Acts - It's just the book of Acts. This is the sequel to the Gospels, and was written by the same author who wrote or redacted the Gospel of Luke.

3. The Epistles - these make up the bulk of the New Testament. For those who have seen A Clockwork Orange, this was the preachy part of the book that Alex didn't like. They're basically letters and sermons interpreting the Gospels and Jesus's teachings. While these books are the shortest ones, there are far more of them than any other section of the Bible at 21 books.

4. Revelation - this is an apocalyptic prophecy (much like Daniel in the Old Testament). It's the violent and destructive book of the New Testament. It's somewhat incoherent with the rest of the New Testament, but belongs to a category known as the Johannine books, which also includes The Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles. I think Christians taking this book literally has created a lot of foolishness. The apocalyptics generally took events of history, politics, and nature and interpreted them metaphorically - this would even include volcanic eruptions and eclipses. Some interpret it as a version of the Gospels and an allegorization of the 1st century AD, with Roman Emperors being recast as heads of the dragon. But yes, like Acts, this is just one book.

A bit of historical background:

So, as you study the literature, you find that there are a few different schools of thought included in the New Testament, they are all kind of smashed together. The original Christian canon was created by a heretical church known as the Marcionites. It is not a closed out possibility that the Marcionites were the first authentic Christians. The hatred for them could stem from the fact that they were the first historical faction to break away from Judaism.

In the early 2nd century AD there was a series of rebellions under Emperor Trajan among the diaspora Jews, this became known as the Kitos War. As punishment, the Romans erected a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mound of Jerusalem (the temple that was destroyed the previous century). This triggered rebellion of the Jewish People in the provinces of Galilee and Judaea. The leaders being Rabbi Akiva and the Messiah Simon Bar Kokhba (pronounced something like "Kohh-bah"). They rebelled and slaughtered the unbelievers, destroyed the legions of  and declared independence.

The Roman Emperor of the time, Hadrian, sent in an army of 50,000 legionaries led by the General Sextus Julius Severus (of the same dynasty as the famed Septimius Severus and Caracalla, but their direct relationship is lost to history). The war was brutal with over a half a million slaughtered, and perhaps more than a million deaths in total. "They slaughtered the men, women and children until blood flowed from the doorways and sewers. Horses sank up until their nostrils, and the rivers of blood lifted up rocks weighing forty se’ah [approximately 700 lb.], and flowed into the sea, where its stain was noticeable for a distance..." (Account from The Palestinian Talmud) - "And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress up to the horses’ bridles, for a thousand six hundred stadia." - Account from Revelation.

The result of the war was that the Jewish population was banned, Galilee and Judaea were combined and renamed to the Roman province of Syria Palestinia, and the diaspora of Jewish people across Europe, Asia, and Africa grew significantly. Those that returned to the province later on became the ancestors of the Palestinian people, most would convert to Islam during the reigns of the Umayyad (661 to 750) and Abbasid Caliphates (750 to 1258) - which, despite modern portrayals of Islamic fundamentalism, were the two most cosmopolitan Empires between the Romans and the Enlightenment. But I'm getting off track...

Below is under debate, and probably will be until the end of civilization, but this is what I find most compelling:

...So! Back to the second century. When this rebellious period was occurring, it was a thing of horror to much of the Jewish population and Romans alike. This resulted in a split among the Jewish population where the first Christians began to break away, and one looked at the more recent writings and considered that the God of Love and Forgiveness couldn't have been the same God of war and vengeance in the Old Testament. By this time, there were also the heretical Gnostic sects of Judaism that had similar beliefs. The Marcionites adopted the idea of the Demiurge, and also that the true God in heaven sent his son, the Logos incarnate (in English: The Word made flesh) to present the teachings to all mankind. They were considered heretics, and their books a heresy. The books included The Evangelion and the Epistles of Paul... this is the first New Testament canon known to history. Fifty years later, there was a counter-rebellion, and they labelled The Evangelion as a redaction of the Gospel (later apologists considered it specifically a redaction of the Gospel of Luke), that cut ties with the mainstream thought (Judaism), but also by this time Christianity in general had become distinct. We know the Evangelion (also called The Gospel of the Lord, the Gospel of Marcion, or the Marcionite Gospel) primarily through the late 2nd and 3rd century apologists who attacked it; aiming for a continuity of Judaism rather than a complete breakaway from it.

The vast majority of biblical scholars conclude that the Marcionites took an earlier Gospel and redacted it. But there is a faction who believe it occurred the other way. It also explains the Synoptic problem which Scholars have theories for, but can't solve because of logical contradictions. I don't find this compelling because The canonized Gospel of Luke addresses the book to Theophilus... who was a historical Patriarch of Antioch, reigning over a half a century after the Marcionites began in the late 2nd century. The scholars ignore it saying "Theophilus isn't the historical one, but rather a metaphorical Theophilus" which I don't find compelling at all, there is no evidence of this beyond it making the Gospel fit their timeline. There is also no evidence of Luke before a fragment dated to the third century AD. The Marcionite priority theory eliminates that "metaphor" BS, eliminates the synoptic problem, and also explains the Johannine canon. And we have evidence for it. So the priority is something like this (from Wikipedia):