Yes.

Which one?

No.

No, not in the way that ‘organized religion’ does. I sort of accept that there might be some superior level of being, but lacking proof, I am not sure.

What I don’t believe:

- that there is such a thing as original sin that some god expects you to spend your life digging out of that hole.

- that this godlike thing is so insecure that it needs people to pray to it

- that a god would condone all the killing that goes on in its name

- that a god would create all the suffering – disease, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.- if it has all this power then why does it happen

- and I definitely don’t believe that god, if it exists, is a micromanager to the level of determining every person’s future

Summary: No.

Yes.

Absolutely not. Logically, there is no basis for belief.

Only in our Lord and Saviour, Kevin Feige.

I believe in a higher power, but I believe in a lot of what @elbanditoroso says. I reject the idea of “one true religion” and I think God is universal and there is no one correct way to worship or believe.

I believe in gods (plural) as a spiritual phenomenon and some other things…

… including the various forms of the Christian god, but not in Christianity’s assertion that their re-hash is THE ONE TRUE GOD etc etc, nor the many myriad other perversions, threats of eternal damnation, powermongering, toxic shaming and other atrocities that have been perpetrated in the name of Judeo-Christian-Islamic god and/or Jesus.

@Desmosthenes I feel that way, too, in my heart.
Other ‘good’ Christians do not agree with me based on doctrine, etc…

Yes, I’d better; I have been chaplain in three different local civic organizations where I live now and was chaplain in 3rd grade for YMCA group.

No.

@Tropical_Willie Seems to me chaplains can be atheists. They don’t have to believe in all the faiths they help people with, just well versed and respectful of the beliefs of others.

I do two to five prayers at the meetings in a night and believe in the power of prayer.

@Tropical_Willie Maybe I think of Chaplain differently. What comes to my mind is Hospital and military chaplains.

@JLeslie, a chaplain is, by actual definition, a member of the clergy.

I don’t believe in any of them.

I consider myself an agnostic-atheist. My view on an omniscient creator is the same as my view on ghosts, I don’t believe in God but I also can’t prove or disprove the existence of God

Yes!

Not really.

I do not see what difference it makes one way or the other.

No, but reality is pretty weird and I can appreciate the motivations for theism, both as an explanation for existence, and as a form of ‘death denial’ to give meaning to our mortal lives and to separate us from all other life.

@rockfan Dude. You are an agnostic. You question the existence of “God.”

No, but I think I’m glad that other people do.

Yes.

I also believe that there may be more than one god. Who knows? Anything is possible. Maybe there’s no god.

@jca2: Sounds kinda agnostic-ish. :^)

I personally can’t, even though I’d like to. There’s too much deep-seated corruption to believe a higher power has this planned for us and thinks we deserve this for some higher purpose and our small animal brains “just can’t see the big picture, so sit back and trust the process”.

Like yea, it may take a horrible crime happening for people to learn to not do something, but how about instead we just make it so millions of people don’t have to suffer instead to get the ball rolling for some master plan towards progress lol.

@canidmajor Chaplains accommodate to the patient’s religion and faith at hospitals and in the military. A Chaplain can be comforting and helpful to atheists as well, and a well trained Chaplain in those settings does not push their own religion. Think of the show MASH.

Rabbis came to visit my aunt when she was in hospice, we are not religious at all. We were very happy to see them. My aunt appreciated their presence.

I don’t see why an atheist can’t be a Chaplain.

I found this article. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/25/jane-flint-atheist-chaplain-patient-choice-nhs

There are even ministers who don’t believe in God, but keep doing their job.

Yes.

@kritiper

Atheism simply means the lack of a belief in a God, it doesn’t mean that you know 100% that God doesn’t exist. Atheism and agnosticism aren’t mutually exclusive, that’s why I consider myself both. All atheists are technically agnostics.

@JLeslie Congratulations, you found one. One.
Here’s the definition that the rest of the world uses: From the Britannica
”Chaplain, originally a priest or minister who had charge of a chapel, now an ordained member of the clergy who is assigned to a special ministry.”

@canidmajor I’m not questioning the dictionary, I’m saying in practice it seems logical to me that hospitals or even military Chaplains could be atheists, because of the responsibilities and tasks they perform in their job. Chaplain is a job. When someone Muslim is ill in a hospital and the only Chaplain is Catholic, the Chaplain will still offer his services. Same if the patient is atheist.

I found this article from Navy Times. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/03/26/no-atheistchaplains-lawmakers-tell-navy/

We’ll see what happens in the future.

@kritiper It exists. I don’t use the term personally, but it exists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism

I don’t use the term because religious people seem to obsess on the agnostic part rather than understanding atheists are basically saying they don’t use God in their life, they don’t believe in God, but anything is possible.

No.

Yes

I am an apatheist, which is to say that I do not think it makes any practical difference whether or not any gods exist. Even if one could offer me irrefutable proof of the existence or the non-existence of a god or gods, it would not change how I live my life. It would not change my appreciation for things like kindness, forgiveness, or generosity, nor would it change my disapproval towards things like bigotry, cruelty, or greed. I would not suddenly find murder acceptable and compassion repulsive. I would not condone knocking over old ladies as they cross the street or condemn those who bring food to the homeless. And I’m kind of worried about people who feel differently.

To be clear, I think most people would not actually change so starkly. But there are some who insist that atheists cannot be moral and use the fact they are only moral because they believe in God as evidence of this claim. I think such people are telling on themselves far more than they are effectively criticizing their atheist targets.

@rockfan “Atheism simply means the lack of a belief in a God”

This is incorrect. Atheism is the belief that no gods exist. A mere lack of belief is non-theism. Newborns, for instance, are non-theists but not atheists.

“Atheism and agnosticism aren’t mutually exclusive”

Yes, but not the way that some people think. Agnosticism is not a mere lack of certainty, after all. It is an intentional suspension of judgment regarding the existence or non-existence of a god or gods (perhaps because one thinks the evidence isn’t convincing in either direction, but one could suspend judgment for other reasons). So a person who says “I believe and am willing to assert that no gods exist but I am not absolutely certain that my belief is correct” is not an agnostic. They are an atheist with some degree of intellectual humility.

To be both an atheist and an agnostic, then, one must be in a position where what they believe, what they are willing to assert, and what they are willing to make an intentional judgment about come apart somehow. This could happen in a variety of ways, the most straightforward of which is that one might be unable to shake the belief that no gods exist while simultaneously being unwilling to assert it or make an intentional judgment about it because they lack sufficient justification for or confidence in their belief to do so.

“All atheists are technically agnostics.”

100% false, for the reasons outlined above.

And yes, I know that there are corners of the internet—and even of the professional literature—where these words are used, abused, and redefined in ways inconsistent with what I’ve written above. But I don’t think we ought to abandon a clear and useful lexicon just because some outliers prefer a muddled and impractical one that generates more heat than light and is most often used to improperly shift the burden of proof in arguments.

@SavoirFaire

So do you think Merriam Webster’s definition is wrong?

@SavoirFaire

Honestly, I feel like you have no idea what you’re talking about.

An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God. But atheists also admit that they can’t prove or disprove God. So that also makes them agnostic. It’s very simple.

There is a semantic difference between “I don’t believe in X” and “I believe there is no X” but the difference is subtle and for many who identify as atheists, they may not make a distinction between the two (there is of course no parallel on the theist side. There’s no such thing as a “lack of disbelief in God”) or resent the characterization of atheism as an active belief (making it sound like a matter of faith). But I think @rockfan that “atheists admit they can’t prove or disprove God” is too general a statement to make. There are definitely atheists who think they can disprove the existence of God and attempt to do so. Likewise, there are those who believe in God but admit they can’t prove it (and thus have faith) and others who claim they know God exists because of their personal experiences.

The sentence of conservation of energy (physics) excludes a supernatural, which can move the material world with immaterial impulses. Our infinite world consists entirely of energy and matter and there is no place for gods.

@SavoirFaire Maybe the classic academic definitions were inadequate to cover the actual array of beliefs and attitudes with regard to gods and no gods.

It isn’t just some corners of the internet. Things like weak-atheist, weak-agnostic, strong agnostic, ignosticism, implicit atheist, and various more, were widely used on all sorts of fora when atheism and religion were popular topics for casual and formal debate on the internet in the late 90s and early 2000s—at least in my experience.

And now look! Your prescriptivist obstinacy has generated unecessary heat!

It is impossible to beat the idea of a god with another idea and stays speculation, so long one hasn’t understood the objective knowledge of physics. I repeat me, the since the 19th c discovered sentence of conservation of energy excludes the existence of a god, of gods, ghosts, and daemons! “God” is just a manmade idea and no material person and no supernatural unmaterial person, which could move our material world. God does not exist, said the natural sciences without saying it, that had to say the logical thinking human being.

Apathetic agnostic here. I don’t know and I don’t care.

@rockfan “So do you think Merriam Webster’s definition is wrong?”

I think that dictionary definitions track actual usage rather than optimal usage, and thus cannot be used as tools for settling debates about how a word is most usefully employed.

“Honestly, I feel like you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

This is literally one of my areas of expertise, but okay.

“An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God.”

An atheist is someone who believes that God does not exist, though lacking any belief in God necessarily follows from that.

“But atheists also admit that they can’t prove or disprove God. So that also makes them agnostic.”

First of all, not all atheists say that they cannot disprove the existence of a god or gods (to their own satisfaction, at least, even if not to the satisfaction of others—how much confidence is required to call something proven, after all, is its own epistemological debate).

Second, even those who say they cannot disprove the existence of a god or gods can still believe that no such things exist. What exists and what we can know, after all, need not be fully overlapping categories. That’s why metaphysics and epistemology are separate—though related—areas of inquiry. Terms like “theism” and “atheism” describe people’s beliefs about what does or does not exist (their metaphysical views) rather than their beliefs about what is or is not known (their epistemological views).

I understand the usage of “agnostic atheist” to mean “the sort of atheist who does not believe that they can prove the non-existence of God,” and I don’t object to using the term as one possible way of conveying that position (though I think there are other ways). My disagreement has simply been with your overly broad characterization of atheism and your insistence that all atheists are also agnostics. Because being agnostic is not about whether or not one can prove or disprove something. It is about whether or not one has decided to suspend judgment on some matter. That suspension could be about the existence or non-existence of a god or gods, but it could also be about the ability to prove or disprove the existence of a god or gods.

@Kropotkin “Maybe the classic academic definitions were inadequate to cover the actual array of beliefs and attitudes with regard to gods and no gods.”

Indeed, but nowhere have I objected to the introduction of new terms (regardless of who might be introducing them). Indeed, you might have noticed that I referred to myself as an “apatheist,” which is itself a term of modern invention. The need for new words neither requires nor justifies muddling the discourse, however, so I continue to maintain that expanding upon a clear and useful lexicon with clear and useful additions is preferable to a muddled and impractical one that is used to gain a rhetorical advantage more often than in it is used to illuminate the area of inquiry.

“Things like weak-atheist, weak-agnostic, strong agnostic, ignosticism, implicit atheist, and various more, were widely used on all sorts of fora when atheism and religion were popular topics for casual and formal debate on the internet in the late 90s and early 2000s”

As one of the many active participants in those debates, I am well aware of this. But since none of these terms were the target of my criticism, I don’t see how this is relevant. My claim was specifically about the most dialectically useful ways to understand “atheist” and “agnostic” with an acknowledgment that both have been adulterated by some for rhetorical purposes.

“And now look! Your prescriptivist obstinacy has generated unnecessary heat!”

I imagine this was supposed to be some sort of clever riposte, but I said nothing about unnecessary heat. I specifically referred to the issue of heat versus light. Heat is unavoidable, but it can be worthwhile for the chance of light.