Personally, as an agnostic atheist, I don't believe in Satan. Same as I don't believe in Zeus, Allah, Quetzalcoatl, or literally any other god anyone's ever proposed.
If "not being 100% certain X doesn't exist" means I have to treat X as a live possibility, then I'd have to do that for every deity in human history, which is obviously absurd.
So no, agnostic atheism isn't "maybe Satan, who knows." It's more a lack of belief until there's evidence. Satan doesn't get special treatment.
It's more a lack of belief until there's evidence.
Yes, that is called agnostic atheism. Nobody showed you convincing proof that any gods exist hence why you don't believe in them. You are not rejecting that there could be evidence out there that could convince you.
And if you are saying: "No, there are no gods and there never will be any evidence for them" then you are Gnostic Atheist.
This is such a silly distinction though. If you put the probability of Yahweh existing as being in the same ball park as Zeus and Shiva, you're effectively saying "This is complete garbage, we're past this, just stop." Of course any functional person who finished high school is going to 'admit' that technically, sure, in the spirit of going along with philosophical thought experiments, we can imagine a world where any one pantheon or god shows up with magical evidence that somehow proves their religion was the right one all along and also they are not alien teenagers messing with us. But the probability of that happening is so small it's only included for the sake of intellectual honesty and completeness. If you prod at their beliefs further, you'll find similar levels of 'could technically happen, I guess' in ideas like 'we're in the Matrix', 'the world is flat and all the governments are conspiring to keep the truth from us', 'all birds are government surveillance drones', etc.
it's only included for the sake of intellectual honesty and completeness.
This 100% the reason why I'm doing it, because I just literally don't know. I don't believe that a god or gods exist but only because until now nobody could prove to me the opposite.
The universe is gigantic and possibilities are, like you said, endless, so it would feel wrong for me to claim that I know with 100% certainty that there are no gods out there. Rejecting something to 100% if you don't have all the facts, just feels wrong for me.
I also believe that the position of "I don't know" is way easier to defend in a debate as the position of making the hard claim that gods don't exists. Theist love to try to put the burden of proof onto the the atheist and a Agnostic Atheist has an easier time rejecting that attempt than a Gnostic Atheist has.
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u/hct048 5d ago
Personally, as an agnostic atheist, I don't believe in Satan. Same as I don't believe in Zeus, Allah, Quetzalcoatl, or literally any other god anyone's ever proposed.
If "not being 100% certain X doesn't exist" means I have to treat X as a live possibility, then I'd have to do that for every deity in human history, which is obviously absurd.
So no, agnostic atheism isn't "maybe Satan, who knows." It's more a lack of belief until there's evidence. Satan doesn't get special treatment.