semantics, philosophy, belief, agnosticismI have been wondering for sometime now about where I fall when it comes on to my beliefs. I know there must be characteristics that define an atheist since there is no organisation that I could join for it. So my question is, what makes someone an atheist, and how different are they from agnostics (Who to me are just people afraid of admitting they are atheist)?
Oh, and please do not tell me they are just people who do not believe in gods.
Atheists are not different from agnostics; they are two separate labels.
Theism vs. atheism is the difference in belief – do you think gods probably exist or probably don’t exist?
Agnosticism vs. gnosticism has to do with confidence; agnostics believe the question to be currently (or perhaps permanently) irresolvable, while gnostics believe they know the answer.
This results in:
And I’m sure that there are many nuances within those broad categories. If you’re not sure, but you suspect god doesn’t exist, then you’re probably an agnostic atheist.
and please do not tell me they are just people who do not believe in gods.
That is really the only thing you can reliably know about someone who says they’re an atheist, because that’s all that label means. If you want to know more about what the atheist position means to a particular atheist, you have to ask them. We’re individuals, and this isn’t a religion – so our positions and opinions on everything are going to be highly variable.
I can say that in my experience, rational atheists (e.g. those who don’t believe because they’ve thought carefully about the position, as opposed to atheists who reject belief as the result of an emotional or irrational experience) do have some common – though not universal – opinions:
The most inclusive definition of an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God (or gods).
As I learned it, an agnostic holds the position that the nature of God (or gods), including the question of His (or their) existence, is unknowable.
The two are largely orthogonal; an agnostic can be either a theist or an atheist. Not knowing is not the same thing as not believing.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins proposes a scale from 1 to 7 to measure the degree to which we do or don’t believe in god, with 1 being 100% certain that there is a god, and 7 being 100% certain that there is no god. Dawkins put himself at about 6.9 on this scale when interviewed by Bill Maher a couple of years ago. I should think that most atheists would grade themselves at 6 or higher.
Sorry to give you an answer you do not want to hear, but the common bond of all atheists is the lack of belief in deities.
With that said, atheists do tend to have other characteristics–they are not universal, but they are statistically significant. Atheists tend to be more liberal than the general population and more open to new experiences.
Check out some of the traits here: http://bornatheist.com/4.html
You might find particulalry interesting the predicted characteristics by Hunsberger and Altemeyer.
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