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[Xaxyx]

Hello, my name is Xaxyx. And I, too, am an agnostic atheist. These terms are not mutually exclusive.

One source of confusion is that the definitions of these terms are often misrepresented. Allow me to clarify, by describing the meaning of these terms as used by the people who use them to describe themselves (as Garbles did):

Agnostic: a person who believes that knowledge regarding the existence or non-existence of deities cannot be obtained (i.e., "unknowable" ).

Atheist: A person who lacks a belief in deities.

Firstly, I should point out the very different nature of these two terms. Agnosticism is a belief, a stance; it is an assertion about the nature of reality in general, and of deities in particular. Its opposite is gnosticism: the belief that knowledge of deities *can* be obtained by man.

Atheism, on the other hand, is not a belief, not a stance. It is the lack of these things; it is, simply and straightforwardly, the lack of a belief in one or more gods. Empty a bottle of milk, and you do not have an anti-milk bottle; you instead merely have an empty bottle, a bottle that simply doesn’t happen to have milk in it.

I am an atheist. Many people are atheists. Some don’t even know it. This is because being an atheist does not require a choice. On the contrary: to be a *theist*, a person who does possess a belief in one or more gods, is what requires a conscious, aware, voluntary choice. Until such time that a person has made such a choice to believe in a god, that person is an atheist. There’s nothing special about it, really; it’s just a word to describe somebody without a god belief. It’s even how the word is built: a-theist, without a god. All human beings are born atheists; it is only through life experiences and personal choices that we may become theists.

Now, given these definitions, it should seem clear why asserting that there’s no such thing as an atheist is untrue. Speaking of myself, I cannot help but be an atheist; I have never elected to obtain a belief in any gods, nor do I happen to possess such motivation at the moment.

And there are many others like me, people who simply have not yet chosen to adopt a god-belief. They may do so in the future; heck, intellectual honesty compels me to assert that I may do so. But here and now, I have not; thus, here and now, I am an atheist.

Now, there are, of course, atheists in the world who possess the belief that there are no gods at all. This is a claim, an assertion; it is a stance, in and upon itself. As it is a stance, its logical consistency can be evaluated, just as the stance of a theist can be similarly assessed.

But these are two different brands of atheists. To clarify: atheists who simply lack a god belief are known as weak atheists. Atheists who maintain an active belief that no gods exist at all are known as strong atheists.

I am an agnostic weak atheist.

– Xaxyx

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