Which is the word that means neither "believer" nor "atheist" but somewhere in between?


What word means neither "believer" nor "atheist" but somewhere in between?


The word starts with the letter 'A', I tried "agnostic" but according to my instructor there is another one.



Answer



I suspect the answer your teacher is thinking of is apatheist, which is a portmanteau word meaning "someone who really doesn't care if there's a god or not".


To be precise, it's not true to say that agnosticism is halfway between theism and atheism: it's really on a different axis, as it's to do with taking a position on knowledge, rather than belief. An agnostic asserts that it's impossible to know whether or not there's a God, which is separate from believing whether or not there is. It is, therefore, possible (although unlikely) to be an agnostic theist: someone who says it's impossible to know that there's a God, but believes anyway.


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