Rather depends why you feel you’re both of these. Are you saying you’re agnostic with respect to any definition of god but atheist with respect to some specific ones? Or that you’re in one camp but inclined towards another? That’s the beauty of philosophy, you can always take the argument to another level.
I know I should never post in GD, 'cause I don’t ever care enough to defend my point of view…
But speaking for me, I tell people that I am agnostic because I believe in the likelihood of there being a creator. I can’t prove it, but I believe it is likely. But I also doubt strongly that any of the world’s organized religions have captured his/her essense. In other words, God exists, but probably not in the form that any of the world’s religions depict him.
It seems to me that this is also true for some who label themselves as believers: day to day, religiosity is absent from their lives. If asked, they will say that they believe in God. If asked, some will name a specific sect that they consider themselves to belong to. (They may be actual members, or they may be naming the church whose Sunday school they attended as a child, but never actually joined.) But they either don’t attend church at all, or do so only once or twice a year, and they don’t think in terms of what God wants or what their church teaches – it’s not really a factor in their lives.
IMO, they say that they believe in God because they don’t not believe. It’s my guess that if someone doesn’t not believe, it’s often because they’ve never really thought about it. They’ve never really considered the question.
If they were brought up in one of the Protestant denominations, these are the people who have no idea as to what distinguishes their denomination from others. These are the people who are completely untroubled if informed that their denomination believes in something with which they do not agree (infant damation, for example, or that belief is all; good works, nothing). They’ll just say, “oh, I don’t believe that,” and go right on saying that this is their denomination.
By the way, re the people who don’t not believe – I’m not assuming that they’d all be agnostics or atheists if they’d just sit down and think about it. Some might well, if they examined the question, decide that that yes, they really did believe.
It was the SDMB that alerted me to my true identity: atheist rather than agnostic.
Reading various religion threads, I came to realize that if I call myself an agnostic, it will often be assumed that I am uncirtain about Christian doctrine; that I think maybe it’s true, and maybe not. Actually, I’m a complete atheist re Christianity. I was counting myself as an agnostic because I’m agnostic on the question of how the universe came to exist.
In one of the religion threads, some helpful person posted a list. It was a series of questions as to what you believed. The first two amounted to the following (I’m probably leaving out a lot of complexity): Do you belive that the univese could have been created rather than “just happening”? And, do you believe that some intelligence beyond our comprehension is keeping the universe going? After that there were questions about belief in a personal God, and belief in various specifics of Christianity. It was a progression with each question you said “yes” to making you more completely in tune with Christianity.
I’d say “yes” only to those first two questions. I don’t know how the universe came to exist. I can’t say it’s impossible that it was started by some force or being or beings beyond our comprehension. Likewise, I can’t say it’s impossible that some force or being or beings beyond our comprehension is/are keeping an eye on the universe (the universe; not individual people). I’d say that if an eye is being kept on the universe, the force, being, or beings who are doing this are not necessarily the same force or being or beings as created the universe.
But that’s it for me. I don’t believe in the God of the Christian Bible or any other personal God. I conclude that it’s more accurate to term me an atheist than an agnostic.
I humbly suggest that the modified thread title is too short as the OP is also looking for the difference between [atheists&agnostics] and [carnal believers]. Which IMHO, is the more interesting.
I find there is no noticeable difference between agnostics and the non-practicers. The latter tends to use a gut instinct on what “God would want”- leading to the same style of choices as the agnostic. You said as much in the OP.
For atheism we would probably have to consider how actively someone “practiced” their atheism. Do they follow a particular school of thought? Are they well read in this school(including criticisms)? Do they spend time contemplated the ramifications and implications of their world outlook?
(I’m probably giving short-shrift to some “hard agnostics” out there who are vigorous in their spiritual beliefs. Most I’ve met in real life however, tend to think believing in some kind of god but not being in a major religion counts as “agnostic”.)
I disagree. I have known people who claim to be agnostic theists (hell, some people might call me one).