I find it odd that when filling out a form that asked me what my religion is one of the choices is Atheist.
What now? That is the that opposite of religion.
Sorta, break down the roots of the words. Atheists activly deny that there is are gods (anti-theism), Agnostics (a-gnostic) are those who dont know, are unconvinced or those who simply dont care. If you really want to be pedantic (annoy your religious friends), point out that most theists are also atheists in a sense as they deny all gods, except for their own.
Atheists activly deny that there is are gods (anti-theism), Agnostics (a-gnostic)
Wild to me that you would put these so close. A-theist, as in “not a theist”, you got it right with gnosticism
The etymology of the word through French, Latin, and to Greek all mean that, too, “godless”, not “against god”
Exactly. Lack of belief in gods is not the same as actively denying that there are gods.
The issue is that in conversation its hard for theists to tell the difference between the two. To them it dosen’t matter if I say “I think your wrong” or “I simply dont care”, a lot of them will see someone who needs to be “saved”. A non-zero number of them will be very annoying about that or be obstructive because of it, so its best to handle all religion based conversations with kid-gloves.