Word for a person who has no opinion about whether god exists

Question

Oversimplification of definitions:

• atheist: Believes in no god.

• agnostic: that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.

Is there a term for someone who just does not care, who has no opinion about the existence or inexistence of god?

They have simply not looked into it. They have not yet formed an opinion and because of this both terms atheist and agnostic don't seem to fit.

Question: What do I call someone who has not formulated an opinion about god? I'm looking for a word other than "atheist" or "agnostic".

Answer 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism

An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or rejecting any claims that gods exist or do not exist. The existence of god(s) is not rejected, but may be designated irrelevant.

Answer 2

Your definition of agnostic is incomplete:

[Merriam-Webster]

1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable
broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something
// political agnostics

In all but the strict first sense, an agnostic is simply someone who doesn't believe one way or the other. They think it might be true—or it might not. In other words, they're not committed to any particular viewpoint.

Unless going by that strict first sense of the word, that doesn't mean that they believe something is actually unknowable. In the second sense of the word, and the casual first sense, an agnostic may also have simply not looked into it much or not really care.

Based on that, you have people who are theists, who believe in the existence of something, people who are atheists, who believe in its nonexistence, and people who are agnostics, who don't (or won't) say one way or the other—for whatever reason.

While there's nothing wrong with apatheism in the other answer, people who are agnostics can also be apatheists. And people who are apatheists may well have looked into it carefully and come to a reasoned conclusion (formed an opinion) that the answer doesn't matter. In fact, I'd say that somebody who claims to be an apatheist must already be aware of what that word means, and so would have formed an opinion about God: that it doesn't matter.

In general, somebody who has not formed an opinion at all is simply undecided. And somebody who has never considered something at all is either wilfully or unintentionally ignorant about that thing.

Answer 3

Technically, that's exactly what atheism is: lack of a theistic belief.

However, the term has been co-opted to mean the slightly corrupted definition that you presented (holding a non-theistic belief), to the extent that dictionaries tend to report the modern definition.

Wikipedia hedges its bets and describes the whole situation:

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities.[1][2][3][4] Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist.[5][6] In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[1][2][7][8] Atheism is contrasted with theism,[9][10] which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.[10][11][12]

So, although I wouldn't recommend using it because you are likely to be misunderstood, technically you already have the proper word.

As covered by the older answers, newer terms have sprung up to plug the gap (like apatheism).

Answer 4

A nontheist can be considered apathetic to questions of religion and the lack thereof - it is somewhat of a broader term. See Wikipedia:

Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious1 and nonreligious[2] attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in a God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of God and differs from an antithetical, explicit atheism. Nontheism does not necessarily describe atheism or disbelief in God; it has been used as an umbrella term for summarizing various distinct and even mutually exclusive positions, such as agnosticism, ignosticism, ietsism, skepticism, pantheism, atheism, strong or positive atheism, implicit atheism, and apatheism.

I have occasionally seen the term "nontheist" being applied to athiests that don't really care that they're an atheist, especially opposed to say, the more recent trend of New Athiests that believe religion is a blight upon humanity.

Answer 5

Ignoring the common dictionary definition of an

• atheist: Believes in no god.

you could also define it broader as:

• atheist: someone who does not believe in the existence of a god or other divine beings and thereby makes no positive claim to their existence

The latter definition would include all your use-cases (but would not be specific for them alone).

In fact, it includes:

• agnostics (as in Dawkin's sense of the de-facto-atheist in his book "The God Delusion"), even if they do not claim "god does not exist". All it takes it that they do not make the positive claim that "this god exists".
• people not knowing of a god-concept
• people not caring about a god-concept
• people rejecting the god-concept

The broader definition I brought up here is often used by atheists themselves, and you may have heard the definition of "atheism" as a "lack of belief".

A common rebuttal to this definition is the statement that it would make rocks atheistic, yet that is countered if we include being able to either be a theist or an atheist as a necessary requirement.

Answer 6

areligious

From UrbanDictionnary:

Having an aversion for or a lack of interest in all religion and religious beliefs.

An areligious person is one who has become frustrated listening to proponents of one religion or another and finds the labels athiest and agnostic inadequate.

From Merriam-Webster (spelled "a-religious"):

noncommittal or professedly neutral concerning religious matters

Answer 7

Along with Apatheism there's also ignorstic.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ignorstic

--

In a purely philosophical point of view atheism is about a lack of belief and such a person would ascribe to weak atheism. But, this is English Stack so maybe you actually need one of various words people have coined.

Answer 8

neutralists have no opinion either way :)

Why the negative vote? To be neutral is not to be swayed in either direction. I myself am neutral on the topic, either of the god or sans god scenario could be true.

Answer 9

Maybe pantheism.

There are a variety of definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God.[9]:p.8 Pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God.[10]

All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it.[11] Some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe (in the sense of the totality of all existence) and God are identical (implying a denial of the personality and transcendence of God).

So reality is "god", or reality is "divine". Since there is no god to look for, there is just existence.

Answer 10

maybe nihilist?

See Nihilism:

Nihilism (/ˈnaɪ(h)ɪlɪzəm, ˈniː-/; from Latin nihil, meaning 'nothing') is the philosophical viewpoint that suggests the denial or lack of belief towards the reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.1 Moral nihilists assert that there is no inherent morality, and that accepted moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism may also take epistemological, ontological, or metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or reality does not actually exist.

So nihilist just doesn't care about anything, including god.