Agnostic or atheist?

atheist is believing in no god, agnostic is believing in a higher power… Im pretty sure thi is right but I’ve heard a lot of different things .hope I can help.

Definitions vary depending on who you’re asking. Generally, people who are agnostic or atheist agree on some variation or expansion the following:

Atheist: There’s no evidence for a god, and therefore no reason to believe in one. Agnostic: Whether or not there’s a god is unknowable.

Neither one asserts that there definitely can’t be a god, but agnostics are inclined to give the proposition the benefit of the doubt, while atheists don’t see any reason to credit more than other unlikely but unproveable assertions.

I’m sure you’ll hear other definitions by other people, though, many of them conflicting with my own.

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

An agnostic is someone who believes that ultimate truths (such as the existance of God) are unknowable.

Commonly these terms are used differently. Folks who haven’t studied philosophy often define atheist as someone who denies the existence of God and agnostic as someone who simply hasn’t made up their mind about if God exists.

Using the first definitions someone can be both an atheist and agnostic and in pracitice many people are both. Using the second set they are a contradiction.

…but that’s how they are generally understood.

…or verbally depreciated.

Here are some common types of Agnosticism.

[Closed agnosticism] (a.k.a hard agnosticism, strong agnosticism, strict agnosticism, or absolute agnosticism) — The view that the question of the existence or nonexistence of God or gods and the nature of ultimate reality is unknowable by reason of our natural inability to verify any experience with anything but another subjective experience. A strong agnostic would say, “I don’t know whether God exists or not, and neither do you.”

[Open agnosticism] (a.k.a. soft agnosticism, weak agnosticism, empirical agnosticism, temporal agnosticism) — The view that the existence or nonexistence of any deity is currently unknown but is not necessarily unknowable, therefore one will withhold judgment until/if any evidence is available. A weak agnostic would say, “I don’t know whether any deity exists or not, but maybe one day when there is more evidence we can find something out.”

[Apathetic agnosticism] (also called Pragmatic agnosticism) — The view that there is no proof of either the existence or nonexistence of any deity, but since any deity that may exist appears unconcerned for the universe or the welfare of its inhabitants, the question is largely academic anyway.

[Agnostic theism] (also called religious agnosticism, spiritual agnosticism) — The view of those who do not claim to know existence of any deity, but still believe in such an existence.

[Agnostic atheism] The view of those who do not know of the existence or nonexistence of a deity, and do not believe in any.

[Ignosticism] The view that a coherent definition of God must be put forward before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. If the chosen definition isn’t coherent, the ignostic holds the noncognitivist view that the existence of God is meaningless or empirically untestable. A.J. Ayer, Theodore Drange, and other philosophers see both atheism and agnosticism as incompatible with ignosticism on the grounds that atheism and agnosticism accept “God exists” as a meaningful proposition which can be argued for or against. An ignostic cannot even say whether he/she is a theist or a nontheist until a better definition of theism is put forth…