this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

It’s a pretty bad word tbh because people have varying things they read into it, just like “atheist.” I’ve heard an old religious family member say that agnostic people believe in God/Jesus but don’t like organized religion.

The definitions that make the most sense to me are that theism/atheism is about what you believe, and gnosticism/agnosticism is about what you claim to know.

This thread made me go see what the dictionary definitions of the words are these days, and I saw that M-W not only has pretty clear definitions, but has a little write up on the terms:

“How Agnostic Differs From Atheist

Many people are interested in distinguishing between the words agnostic and atheist. The difference is quite simple: atheist refers to someone who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods, and agnosticrefers to someone who doesn’t know whether there is a god, or even if such a thing is knowable. This distinction can be troublesome to remember, but examining the origins of the two words can help.”