Why agnostic? Like… If there’s no proof, why believe in the existence of a deity at all?

For me personally, atheism is saying ‘there is nothing more to the universe or reality, what you see is what you get’ which is extremely pretentious. Agnosticism is admitting to the possibility that there’s something going on here, but we don’t know and would likely be incapable of understanding what it is.

Atheism: I don’t believe in the existence of god(s)

Agnosticism: I haven’t seen any proof for god thus can’t believe in one

It’s the same thing really, but without the “negative” connotations usually attributed to atheism or atheists

It’s the same thing really, but without the “negative” connotations usually attributed to atheism or atheists.

Atheists and Agnostics would obviously disagree. There’s a core philosophical difference between being convinced in the negative and being unconvinced in the affirmative.

That said, what are the consequences of being a Theist, an Atheist, or an Agnostic? I might argue that Theists and Atheists have history of leveraging their confidence into an active policy of discrimination and bigotry. Whether you’re a Chinese Communist cracking down on under-18 church attendance or an Israeli Zionist conducting a pogrom against Palestinians, there’s a habit of imbuing your personal beliefs with political teeth.

“See, I’m not really an atheist but agnostic. It means I’m not to be expelled from this community as a heretic”

The flip side of this being, “I’m not expelling you from the community for excessive display of religious ferver”.

It’s easier to sympathize with avowed Atheists in nations where atheism is a disenfranchised minority. But as soon as you give someone like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris an ounce of political capital, they start cheer leading a genocide.

That, I think, is a real tangible difference. Agnostics tend not to begrudge other ideologies in the same way.

Who says that atheism involves being convinced of the negative? I’m an atheist because I’m not a theist. I’m agnostic because I’m neither convinced of the negative nor the affirmative. Both labels apply to me.

Who says that atheism involves being convinced of the negative?

The textbook definition: disbelief in the existence of God or gods.

I’m an atheist because I’m not a theist.

That doesn’t logically follow. You’re ignoring the third option of simply not having an opinion.

I’m agnostic because I’m neither convinced of the negative nor the affirmative

Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact.

That’s very different from a strict disbelief.

Disbelief just means not believing something. Not believing that a claim is true is not the same as believing that that claim is false. A lack of belief in any deities is not the same as a belief in a lack of any deities.

The prefix a- means without. If one is without theism, then they are a-theist. There is no third option. You have theism or you don’t. Having no belief one way or the other means you don’t have it.

you can suspend judgement. that's the reasonable thing to do. it's literally the middle ground between accepting and rejecting a claim.

I really don’t know how many other ways I can put it. Theism is defined as accepting the claim that there is at least one deity. You either do that or you don’t. You’re either theist or you’re not. If you’re some third option, that means you’re not theist. if you’re not theist, you’re without theism. The word for when you’re without theism is atheist.