<p>Theoretically speaking, yes, people can only be theists or atheists.</p>
<p>But imagine this: a car passes by you and someone comes over and says “I know that the car that just passed by was travelling at either 30 or 31 mph. Do you believe it was travelling at 30 mph?” It’s a yes or no question, but not one everyone could answer. The question “Do you believe in God?” is equally meaningless and unanswerable to me. I would not change a single thing about my life if someone came to me with proof that a deity does or does not exist, so I simply can’t be bothered to think of myself as a theist or as an atheist.</p>
<p>Either way, if anyone’s interested, the OED defines agnostic as “a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.” It’s not a hard concept to grasp, to be honest.</p>
<p>Funny how Atheism/Agnosticism are by far the most prevalent. I feel that this trend is representative of the younger generations, I wonder why this is.</p>
<p>I second that. Only say what YOU actually are. If you only go to church on Easter or Just celebrate Christmas I don’t think that makes you Christian</p>
<p>^ Uh, why in the world do YOU have the power to say who’s a Christian and who isn’t? That’s simply an instance of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Either you accept that everyone who considers themselves Christian is in fact Christian or you provide some arbitrary, non-justifiable cut-off between Christian and non-Christian, usually conveniently placing you in the “Christian” group.</p>
<p>Also, since Agnosticism, Atheism, and Apatheism are:
A) Not mutually exclusive
B) Usually containing the same subset of population and
C) Not religions</p>
<p>a more accurate chart (with my lack of religion included) would look like this:</p>
<p>Apatheism is true to its name: Apathy. Apatheists just don’t care. It’d be daft to lump Agnostics and Atheists in with Apatheists, because Apatheists couldn’t care less one way or the other when it comes to the possible existence of a higher power. Atheists and most Agnostics have a relatively staunch viewpoint on their non-belief (either God doesn’t exist or God probably doesn’t exist. Those two are hugely different from “I don’t give a ****”).</p>
<p>The thing is, apatheism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. Even if you were to say “I don’t care if God exists” you would still be able to answer the question “Do you believe God exists?” yes or no (most often times no).</p>
<p>For example, I don’t care if unicorns exist, and I don’t believe unicorns exist.</p>
<p>If the answer was no, that person would be an Atheist then, right? Apatheists who stay true to what Apatheism really is would just scoff at that question and define the word apathy for you. Either that, or they would realize they’ve been living under the guise of a belief that they truly don’t actually hold.</p>
<p>You can not care about something yet still hold a belief about it. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I’d go as far as to say, everyone must either believe in God or not believe in God. Again, even if I don’t care at all about the existence of Bigfoot, I must still answer the question “do you believe in Bigfoot” with a yes or no. Saying “I don’t care” doesn’t answer the question at all.</p>