ELI5: What is the difference between Athiesm and agnosticism ?

I know there's a lot of other replies here saying something similar, but I'm going to throw in the origins of the terms, as it helps understanding the nuances a bit better. Both terms come from Greek.

Atheist is the prefix a- meaning without combined with the word for god(s) so an atheist is "without gods". (historically this did not always mean that one lacked a belief in any gods, sometimes it just meant the God(s) of society at large, for example, early christians were accused of Atheism in the Roman empire).

Agnostic is the same prefix (a-) with the word for knowledge (Gnostos). This means the position that there is insufficient knowledge available to come down in favour of either side.

When people call themselves atheists in our society, they are almost certainly both agnostic and atheist, they are not claiming to know that there is no god, they are claiming that there is no good reason to think that there is.

As an add-on, atheists would usually argue that the claim that theists (those who do believe in god(s)) make is so substantially different from other types of claim, such as that 'I own a car' that the default position in the absence of compelling evidence is to not believe such a claim.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread