this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Agnosticism isn't a religion. Atheism is. You have to have faith to "know" something doesn't exist with certainty.
Atheists aren't claiming to have positive proof of the nonexistence of God.
The term means that someone has not seen convincing evidence for God's existence.
Likewise, I wouldn't say I'm agnostic about Russel's Teapot or any mythical idea because that terms tends to imply that you find the existence and nonexistence of the thing to be comparably likely.
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.
Atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of deities.
Your definition of atheism is not my experience with pretty much every atheist I've ever met. It's not absense of belief, but belief that God doesn't exist. There was never anything nuanced about the definition.
Now we can say absense of belief for the sake of discussion, but then it becomes an issue of semantics, as there is overlap with agnosticism. But it doesn't match my experience at all. Most atheists will call you names for suggesting anything but the idea that the laws of physics are a complete description of reality. Teenage edgelords mainly.
There's a difference between speaking of a category of behavior and being personally named.
Mhhh well this is a difficult question. Atheists believe there is no God. So there is no point in religion. From a Atheists point of view atheism is not a religion. From a neutral pov you may argue the believe in no God is a religion of its own.