Upon further reflection, I have known people who were both religious and agnostic at the same time; people who had belief/faith but admitted they couldn’t possibly know the truth. I guess that does make a good argument for the additional qualification of ‘agnostic atheist’. I guess I just too regularly encounter people who assume that all atheists actively believe there is no god, so I’ve become a bit defensive as to what the word actually means. I have acquaintances who are atheists who say “there’s no god” with absolute metaphysical certainty, and erroneously consider me a like-minded person, which I have always found odd because atheism doesn’t require an active belief in the absence of any higher power.
Upon further reflection, I have known people who were both religious and agnostic at the same time; people who had belief/faith but admitted they couldn’t possibly know the truth. I guess that does make a good argument for the additional qualification of ‘agnostic atheist’. I guess I just too regularly encounter people who assume that all atheists actively believe there is no god, so I’ve become a bit defensive as to what the word actually means. I have acquaintances who are atheists who say “there’s no god” with absolute metaphysical certainty, and erroneously consider me a like-minded person, which I have always found odd because atheism doesn’t require an active belief in the absence of any higher power.