For simplicity, I’ve always explained agnosticism as the belief that “I don’t know and neither do you”.

i call myself a devout agnostic. the justaposition of those words is inherently absurd since part of agnosticism and identifying as such is believing there is value to studying theology even if you yourself don’t believe the theologies you’re studying because ultimately prior to colonization, religion was how groups of people encoded and passed along their wisdom. however saying “devout agnostic” throws people enough off balance enough to introduce them to these concepts since so many say with their whole chest that they’re something when traditionally these terms have meant something else to the people who use them.

for example, an astounding (at least to me) number of people say quakers and unitarians aren’t christians. when you dig down on this you often find that this position is rooted in a believe (both positive and negative) that the fundamental mechanism and experience of christianity is trauma. however, when you look at the broader world of religion, you find that that’s mostly only Christian denominations rooted in the theologies of the roman empire such as roman catholicism and the various european orthodoxies like Greek and russian. however, the oldest denomination, Ethiopian Orthodox, would i think to the people who say quakers and unitarians aren’t christians, seem very unchistian. for that matter, i think so would Native America Christianity, Oriental Orthodox, and Armenianism. (fun fact, the Unitarian church is rooted in Oriental Orthodox, which is either the second or third oldest christian denomination)

That is not true. There are gnostic athiests and agnostic deists.

The last also happens in the absence of religious motivation quite a bit.

For real. Literally you can just say, “You are the problem. All girls and women are the problem.” There’s zero need to bring God into the equation to live a good, normal life.

It’s a sarcastic counter to the typical arguments that there’s no inherent morality in human culture without religion. You know, people don’t naturally have empathy, so they have to be taught to simulate empathy because they beleive they’ll be judged when they die.

Generally in atheistic communities discourse around religion tends to be around where religion is used to replace science, often as a means of control of behavior and othering of out groups.

Speculating, that is likely because many people join these communities after being ostracized or faced abuse at the hands of people in the in-group so it makes sense that those are the aspects of religion that stand out most to them are those aspects.

There is a reason communities have had religious and spiritual practices for millennia, they do provide concrete benefits and social good in terms of community building and as forms of cultural preservation and providing support systems, both emotional and material. Those aspects tend not to be talked about in atheistic and skeptic communities. Not saying they’re obligated to balance every negative comment with a positive one out of some misguided sense of fairness or balanced discourse but if you’re interested in having some kind of well rounded view of the world, it is helpful to understand positive aspects of things you generally disagree with.

In this case, if someone is arguing religion be removed completely it is important to address the loss of positive aspects that keep people in a religion otherwise you’re just going to be yelling at a wall and not actually doing anything or putting people off by assuming everyone who holds any kind of religious belief or engages in religious rituals is some kind of brainwashed cultist.

They did try to put a baphomet statue in front of a 10 commandments monument in Arkansas. They are fighting for a plurality of religion, not secularism.
If I wanted to contribute to a secular cause, I would much rather contribute to a secular organization to begin with.

TST does not proselytize

But the only times you hear of them is when people are trying to get more folk implied (or when they send a lawsuit, but that’s an other story). TST plays the card of a non profit when they don’t want to be associated with religious weirdos, and the card of religion when they want a special treatment. In the end it’s a knockoff religion that hijacked the name “satanism” while replicating what they denounce of christians.

Fire is bad so we need to recruit more firefighters to fight it.

It’s much closer to putting up advertisement against advertisement.

They are just an NGO.

That’s not true. It’s a bunch of for-profit organizations coupled with a recognized nonprofit church so they can be exempted from taxation. See here : https://the.satanic.wiki/index.php/The_Satanic_Wiki . Also, as a supposedly non-profit org, they do not disclose their financial information, which is usually a big red flag.

God, my mother is going to cackle at that one

Jesus thank god, only one accurate comment in this thread on the difference between atheists and agnostics.

They are the answers to two different questions

Exactly.

So you’re saying that agnosticism is a spectrum of atheism? That belief must be active - if you don’t specifically believe in a god(s) then you’re atheist, and agnosticism describes the level to which you hold that conviction? Seems like a very narrow way of looking at it. What about those who explicitly believe we can’t know if there’s a god (s)?

I’m interested in the source of your latter assertion as well, I’m taking it to be anecdotal?

Agnostics are “I don’t know, probably not. It’s impossible to know.”.

Atheists are “I don’t think there’s a god, there’s no proof”.

Anti-theists are “there is definitely no god”, and they have just as much evidence as believers.

Yeah but you’d be surprised how people would hate you more for believing in nothing than believing in a bowl of pasta… even if it’s a fake believe in pasta that symbolizes nothing.