The discussion of and definition of the border between atheist/agnostic is common on this board. The other day I was pondering this and approached it from another point of view: where’s the border agnostic/religious?
Here’s my current reasoning and conclusion:
The definition of atheist is someone who is certain there is no god.
The definition of religious is someone who is certain there is a god.
The definition of an agnostic is basically a very wide spectrum of doubt.
If you only think it’s very likely there’s a god, you’re not actually religious, you’re agnostic with pro-religious tendencies. To actually be religious for real you have to be certain.
If you’re certain that something is true, no matter what that something is, you will act as if it is true. Your thoughts and emotions will reflect this.
So if you’re religious and your faith is Christianity or Islam, you’re certain there’s an afterlife, heaven. And that this heaven is in every comparable way superior to your current situation. Not just better, but superior in every concievable way.
Then you should be looking forward to death. Assuming you think you’re going to heaven. If you don’t think you’re going to heaven you should be doing everything in your power to change that, for example stop sinning, pray or whatever the conditions are. In fact you should either be giddy with anticipation, or working feverishly to secure your spot.
Most people don’t look forward to dying, or arent’t working their ass off praying/not-sinning/whatever. So obviously they don’t really believe. They’re some level of agnostic.
You could say that atheist means thinkin there’s a 0% (or extremely close to it) chance that there is a god, and religious meaning you think there’s a 100% chance (or extremely close to it). And frankly, if you think there’s only a 75% chance of there being a god you should still be pretty confident about dying. And I don’t think many people are.
So my current opinion is: The vast majority of people are agnostic.
Or more provocatively: All religious people are crazy zealots and potential suicide bombers.
Now talk me off the ledge… (Just kidding! I’m an atheist)