Information moves faster than ever before, shattering boundaries, challenging our ideas, and sparking our curiosity. There are few questions more exciting and grandiose than “Is there a God?”, and more people are finding the wherewithal to ask it every day.

The number of religious “nones” worldwide rose to 24.2% in 2020¹, with noticeable increases in both Europe and the United States. Some are satisfied with remaining “unaffiliated,” while others take on the labels of “agnostic” or “atheist.” In this article, I’ll lay out what these terms mean so you can satisfy your curiosity or find your place in this range of secular opinions.

In everyday conversation, atheism means “a disbelief or lack of belief in gods.” The “disbelief/lack of belief” language is intentionally ambiguous, leaving the label open to both those who “actively disbelieve” and those who are simply unconvinced. It works for everyday purposes because it generally describes anyone who doesn’t believe in gods. 

In philosophical terms, atheism describes the position that there are no gods. Since you can’t prove a negative, philosophical atheism is mostly reactive. When confronted with an argument for theism, an atheist is the person who takes the stance that it’s invalid, unconvincing, or inferior to a naturalist explanation.

Being an atheist means accepting the idea that there is no immaterial or spiritual influence on your life. Having not been convinced by any claim that there is, you default to the natural conclusion: that the material is all that there is; no god, no afterlife, no one answering prayers. As bleak as that might sound to some, it’s actually an empowering revelation.

An atheist is a skeptic who questions preconceived notions that could give them an inaccurate view of reality. Rather than accepting a superstitious answer to hard questions like “What happens after we die?”, an atheist approaches it from a place of intellectual honesty. We admit that the most likely outcome is that we become compost, and that — crucially — we must live with that knowledge. Suddenly, every moment is that much more precious, as there’s no guarantee that it won’t be our last.

Atheists might treat hard questions with dispassionate objectivism, but we also delight in discovering tangible, verifiable answers. For example, the answer to “Where did humans come from?” involves millions of years of evolution by natural selection, and a profound discovery that we all share the same ancestors. By approaching that answer without attributing a divine designer, we can truly appreciate the awe-inspiring natural processes and mind-blowing timescales required to make humans, and all living things, so incredibly special.

The key difference between atheism and agnosticism is between belief and knowledge. 

This seemingly small difference has spawned several debates about whether one can truly be 100% atheist, so there’s no shortage of grids, diagrams, and spectrums on the internet seeking to illustrate different combinations of atheism and agnosticism. In my opinion, these are distinctions without useful differences.

In this case, I believe simpler definitions, like those above, are more useful in describing the difference in these two groups’ epistemological stance:

Russell’s Teapot is a neat philosophical thought experiment that can shed light on the difference between atheism and agnosticism. It was put forward by Bertrand Russell in a 1952 essay titled “Is There a God?” In it, he mentions that it’s impossible to prove that there is not a china teapot orbiting the sun between Mars and Earth, but that it’s so unlikely that we wouldn’t take that claim seriously².

You cannot prove that the claim isn’t true, though, since you cannot simultaneously check every square inch of space between Mars and Earth to look for it. The claim is unfalsifiable, and for many atheists, that’s enough to form a belief that it is untrue. Meanwhile, an agnostic might agree that the claim is unlikely, but would still claim uncertainty.

Atheism is not a belief system in and of itself. At its core, it’s a philosophical position about the truth of theistic claims. Atheists “believe” that gods don’t exist in the same way most people “believe” that leprechauns, unicorns, and honest politicians don’t exist. That is, they’ve heard of them, they’ve probably met people who believe in them, but they’ve never been convinced of their existence.

If anything in the atheist position could be considered a debatable belief, it would be the axiom that unfalsifiable claims are patently untrue. If you want to convince an atheist of anything, you first have to convince us that the claim you’re making is sound. Then, we can get into the particulars of how that claim might be reasonable.

Thus, the debate rages on, with theists offering new and inventive arguments about the existence of gods while atheists poke holes in them.

The main difference between theists, atheists, and agnostics is their willingness to consider unfalsifiable claims. Whether you call that willingness faith or superstition is a matter of debate, and I’m here for it. 

My next work is a book titled Choose Your Own Debate With: An Atheist, in which I take on the role of an atheist interlocutor in your pocket. In classic, choose-your-own-adventure style, you select the arguments to debate the theist perspective and read the atheist’s (that’s me) response. Check it out in my Works in Progress page, and follow me on Bluesky for regular updates on my progress.