Atheists, Agnostics and Pseudo-Non-Believers
There are people, who claim to be atheists, they believe themselves to be atheists, but they are not.
Atheism is derived from the Greek prefix a~ for the absence of something and ~theos, which means god. That means, that an atheist is void of considering the existence of a god, he is someone, who lives as if he had never even heard of the claim, that there could be a god. An atheist wonders as much about the existence of a god as a Neanderthal man wonders about the existence of a computer. It just does no occur to him to consider the possibility. An atheist is certainly not someone to believe in the non-existence of a god, as many people wrongly assume.
Agnosticism is derived from the Greek prefix a~ for the absence of something and ~gnosis. which means knowledge. Agnostics make a point, that they cannot know, if there is a god or not.
Both atheism and agnosticism are based upon the scientific thinking, that the non-existence of something cannot be proven, while the existence could be proven by evidence, which so far has not been found yet.
Atheists and agnostics are therefore two varieties of non-believers. The real difference between atheists and agnostics and pseudo-non-believers is the difference in their estimation of the probability of the existence of a god.
For an atheist, the probability of the existence of a god is so extremely low, that only the unprovability of non-existence makes the probability any different from zero.
For an agnostic, there is no estimation of probability, he has no opinion, if the existence or the non-existence of a god would be more probable.
For a pseudo-non-believer, the situation is very different. He is deriving his momentary absence of a belief from his personal experience and not from scientific thinking. He may even estimate the existence of a god as very probable, while personally not yet having experienced any evidence of the existence of a god, he is waiting for this to happen in the future.
He either has an unfulfilled wish for a god, or he is a disappointed religious believer, who hoped in vain for a god's help in a crisis.
Pseudo-non-believers often declare themselves as atheists or agnostics, not knowing the true meaning. When rationality is not a part of their personality and when they have never had a chance to learn scientific thinking, they can be sincere in their self-labeling. Pseudo-non-believers are gullible people temporarily not under the manipulative influence of a religious belief system. They are somehow between believes as are unemployed people between jobs.
For an atheist in search of a fellow atheist as a mindmate, religious people are easy to avoid. But pseudo-atheists are dangerous, when they not only claim to be atheists, but are themselves convinced to be. As soon as it comes to the necessity of solving life's challenges, there are fundamental differences in the approach.
The atheist wants to solve conflicts by rational decisions derived from constructive communication.
The gullible pseudo-atheist wants to get some higher authority to solve the problems for him. He buys self-help books of any kind to get recipes. If he cannot prey to a god to solve the problem for him, he instead believes for example in pseudo-science like NLP as a tool that allegedly enables him to gain control over others.
There are people, who claim to be atheists, they believe themselves to be atheists, but they are not.
Atheism is derived from the Greek prefix a~ for the absence of something and ~theos, which means god. That means, that an atheist is void of considering the existence of a god, he is someone, who lives as if he had never even heard of the claim, that there could be a god. An atheist wonders as much about the existence of a god as a Neanderthal man wonders about the existence of a computer. It just does no occur to him to consider the possibility. An atheist is certainly not someone to believe in the non-existence of a god, as many people wrongly assume.
Agnosticism is derived from the Greek prefix a~ for the absence of something and ~gnosis. which means knowledge. Agnostics make a point, that they cannot know, if there is a god or not.
Both atheism and agnosticism are based upon the scientific thinking, that the non-existence of something cannot be proven, while the existence could be proven by evidence, which so far has not been found yet.
Atheists and agnostics are therefore two varieties of non-believers. The real difference between atheists and agnostics and pseudo-non-believers is the difference in their estimation of the probability of the existence of a god.
For an atheist, the probability of the existence of a god is so extremely low, that only the unprovability of non-existence makes the probability any different from zero.
For an agnostic, there is no estimation of probability, he has no opinion, if the existence or the non-existence of a god would be more probable.
For a pseudo-non-believer, the situation is very different. He is deriving his momentary absence of a belief from his personal experience and not from scientific thinking. He may even estimate the existence of a god as very probable, while personally not yet having experienced any evidence of the existence of a god, he is waiting for this to happen in the future.
He either has an unfulfilled wish for a god, or he is a disappointed religious believer, who hoped in vain for a god's help in a crisis.
Pseudo-non-believers often declare themselves as atheists or agnostics, not knowing the true meaning. When rationality is not a part of their personality and when they have never had a chance to learn scientific thinking, they can be sincere in their self-labeling. Pseudo-non-believers are gullible people temporarily not under the manipulative influence of a religious belief system. They are somehow between believes as are unemployed people between jobs.
For an atheist in search of a fellow atheist as a mindmate, religious people are easy to avoid. But pseudo-atheists are dangerous, when they not only claim to be atheists, but are themselves convinced to be. As soon as it comes to the necessity of solving life's challenges, there are fundamental differences in the approach.
The atheist wants to solve conflicts by rational decisions derived from constructive communication.
The gullible pseudo-atheist wants to get some higher authority to solve the problems for him. He buys self-help books of any kind to get recipes. If he cannot prey to a god to solve the problem for him, he instead believes for example in pseudo-science like NLP as a tool that allegedly enables him to gain control over others.
