Seriously

[robvalue]

Hello welcome!

Let me jump right in and say most atheists do not claim there is no God. The general atheist position is that there is no good reason to believe there is a God, yet, given the current information. It's not a claim that the negation, no gods, is true.

Most atheists are agnostic, meaning we don't believe a God does exist, but we don't know for sure whether one does or not. That's being both sceptical and open minded.

You'll find different definitions of "atheist" all over the place, but the one I describe is the most accurate as currently used by atheists.

Someone who claims to know "there is no God" would be a gnostic atheist. This is not a requirement to be an atheist, but rather a further position. The distinction is subtle, and one that many people seemingly cannot grasp (not aiming that at you, just talking from experience).

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Let me use an example to demonstrate.

There's a huge container of marbles in front of us. It has so many in it that we can't possibly count them. I make the claim to you that there is an even number of marbles in there. I offer no evidence, I just ask you to believe me.

Do you accept my claim? Are you convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the number is even?

The sensible answer is no, you're not convinced. You reject my claim. You have no good reason to just accept that there's an even number.

Notice that by rejecting my claim, you are NOT saying my claim is untrue. You are saying there is not enough evidence, yet, to agree that it IS true. So to reject a claim, you need not declare that it is false. In this example, if you had to also declare the claim was false, you would be in the position of making your own claim that there are in fact an odd number of marbles. Which I hope you can see is absurd.

It's the same with the God claim. Someone claims "God with properties x,y,z... Exists". I reject the claim, because there is no good evidence. I am not saying the claim is false, I'm saying there's no good reason to say yet that it is true.

Atheism and theism are to do with what you believe. Agnosticism and Gnosticism are to do with what you claim to know. These combine to give you four possibilities:

Agnostic theist, gnostic theist, agnostic atheist [most atheists!], gnostic atheist.