Comic Strips

It’s the same thing really, but without the “negative” connotations usually attributed to atheism or atheists.

Atheists and Agnostics would obviously disagree. There's a core philosophical difference between being convinced in the negative and being unconvinced in the affirmative.

That said, what are the consequences of being a Theist, an Atheist, or an Agnostic? I might argue that Theists and Atheists have history of leveraging their confidence into an active policy of discrimination and bigotry. Whether you're a Chinese Communist cracking down on under-18 church attendance or an Israeli Zionist conducting a pogrom against Palestinians, there's a habit of imbuing your personal beliefs with political teeth.

“See, I’m not really an atheist but agnostic. It means I’m not to be expelled from this community as a heretic”

The flip side of this being, "I'm not expelling you from the community for excessive display of religious ferver".

It's easier to sympathize with avowed Atheists in nations where atheism is a disenfranchised minority. But as soon as you give someone like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris an ounce of political capital, they start cheer leading a genocide.

That, I think, is a real tangible difference. Agnostics tend not to begrudge other ideologies in the same way.

"See, I'm not really an atheist but agnostic. It means I'm not to be expelled from this community as a heretic"

I identity with this. When I was younger I identified as agnostic, as I saw it as a more socially acceptable option than atheism which allowed me to not have to pretend to be religious.

But I've identified as atheist for many years now. In my case by the time I did, everyone of significance in my life was nonreligious.

For simplicity, I've always explained agnosticism as the belief that "I don't know and neither do you".

i call myself a devout agnostic. the justaposition of those words is inherently absurd since part of agnosticism and identifying as such is believing there is value to studying theology even if you yourself don't believe the theologies you're studying because ultimately prior to colonization, religion was how groups of people encoded and passed along their wisdom. however saying "devout agnostic" throws people enough off balance enough to introduce them to these concepts since so many say with their whole chest that they're something when traditionally these terms have meant something else to the people who use them.

for example, an astounding (at least to me) number of people say quakers and unitarians aren't christians. when you dig down on this you often find that this position is rooted in a believe (both positive and negative) that the fundamental mechanism and experience of christianity is trauma. however, when you look at the broader world of religion, you find that that's mostly only Christian denominations rooted in the theologies of the roman empire such as roman catholicism and the various european orthodoxies like Greek and russian. however, the oldest denomination, Ethiopian Orthodox, would i think to the people who say quakers and unitarians aren't christians, seem very unchistian. for that matter, i think so would Native America Christianity, Oriental Orthodox, and Armenianism. (fun fact, the Unitarian church is rooted in Oriental Orthodox, which is either the second or third oldest christian denomination)