What is the difference between Atheism and Agnosticism?

There were atheists long before the theory of evolution, before we knew the age of the world, and before we had good theories on the origin of the cosmos.

I’ve never met an atheist who quit believing in God because evolution or the Bib Bang theory made such sense to them. They quit believing based on a perceived weakness of religion rather than the strength of scientific explinations. The most common viewpoint among believers is dualism. They do not see science and religion as opposed to each other; they see them as answers to different questions. Only fundamentalists generally see their worldview challenged by scientific investigation.

Most atheists don’t think they have all the answers, we are fine admitting that there are things we don’t know. The fact that we don’t understand things (like how life sprung from lifelessness, how the cosmos formed, etc) doesn’t cause us to latch onto supernatural explinations though.

If it was proven that the cosmos didn’t start with a big bang or that evolution doesn’t work the way we thought it did it wouldn’t cause me to turn to religion.

From a neutral standpoint: Atheists believe there is no God. Agnostics believe the existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven.

From my standpoint: Agnostics believe that Theists AND Atheists are BOTH WRONG.

Oh, and the definition of ‘Agnostic’ that mentioned a ‘lack of knowledge’ …it meant GLOBALLY, not personally.

Atheist base their belief on Scientific theory which changes every 5 - 80 years and Agnostics base their beliefs on lack of knowledge. go ahead look it up.

One is not a valid non-religion.

Atheists are people who don’t believe in God who (usually) base their lack of belief on scientific facts and evidence. Agnostics are people who are not knowledgeable about the existence of God. Agnosticism usually goes hand-in-hand with atheism, whereas gnosticism goes hand-in-hand with theism.

Actually gnosticism is a religious viewpoint that followers are saved by having certain knowledge that only they are privy to. There were Gnostic Christians and their beliefs were quite interesting. When Constatine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire any Christian groups deemed heretical were wiped out, Gnostics being one of these groups.

Actually gnosticism is a religious viewpoint that followers are saved by having certain knowledge that only they are privy to.

That would be Gnosticism with a capital G. Gnosticism with a lowercase G simply means “knowing.” Most atheists would say that they’re not 100% sure that God doesn’t exist (Even the Great Richard Dawkins is only 99.9% sure), but most atheists would say that they’re 100% sure that God exists.

Pfft, I’m always right.

I don’t think Gnostics believed in being saved at all because they didn’t believe in the Biblical God. They seemed to be more interested in knowing the ultimate truth, not going to heaven. I’ve read that some Gnostics believed the Biblical God was almost like a devil-like hindrance to us all. That was a very interesting idea.

I think its that Atheists believe, without a doubt, that there is no God and Agnostics aren’t really sure and don’t care much anyways.

Both are missing spirituality in their lives, they are generally very pathetic.