Learning to Clutch... The Definitions

Since the topics we’re going to be writing about are often misunderstood or unclear, I thought it would be good to explain the lexicon we’re using. After all, you can’t hold a constructive conversation if people aren't using the same definitions.

I want to start by dispelling common misconceptions about “Agnostic” and “Atheist.”

An Atheist by definition is simply someone that doesn’t hold a belief in a god or gods. Theists propose god concepts, and those that aren’t convinced by any of them are Atheists.

An Agnostic by definition is someone who simply claims that they lack knowledge or certainty about a topic. You can claim to be Gnostic or Agnostic about any topic, we’re just most familiar with it in regards to religion.

This means that rather than a continuum from Christianity/Islam/etc. to Deism, to Agnosticism to Atheism we have two axis overlapping.