I'm posting this for a couple of reasons. First of all it's because a semi-debate in PSUs thread was hobbled by bad communication (probably on my part) and because this is something a lot of people tend not to know. Also, since it's more of a philosophical explanation than anything controversial or anything to be debated about, I figure I'll put it into the Flood for the sake of discussion value.

The first thing which is important to understand is that the two aren't fundamentally different positions on the same spectrum. For instance, you can be an atheist and an agnostic - as most people are. You can also be an agnostic and a theist.

The two differ in their foundations. Agnosticism is concerned with epistemology, and usually asserts that we don't know - and can go on to say we never will. Atheism is more to do with ontology and metaphysics, and is thus conerned with belief.

A lot of atheist are agnostics because they don't claim that God doesn't exist - they simply claim to not believe in a god. They say they don't know if God exists and thus lack faith. Making them both agnostics and atheists, however this position is configurated.

For theists, it can be much the same. A lot of theists aren't agnostics, and are instead fideists since they claim their belief in God through faith - although some certainly have faith while still being explicitly agnostic.

Hopefully that's cleared it up.

Anyone who identifies as "agnostic" and nothing else is a ball-less wonder.

no one posted the chart yet

Quote from: Assassin 11D7 on December 22, 2014, 07:58:03 PM

This will never end.

Anybody who disputes this is pretty much demonstrably just using the langauge incorrectly.

But they'll just claim something else or that they're using the language in a way that aligns with what you say, but uses the words differently.

Religious disputes never end, Meta. Never, not even over what the term religious means.

But they'll just claim something else or that they're using the language in a way that aligns with what you say, but uses the words differently.

I'll still take the challenge. Logical positivists die hard.