Guest Author - Lisa Shea

On one hand we have "a person who believes in God". We'll just call that person a "believer". Belief in God is based on faith. You simply believe, in your heart and mind, that God exists and that he is up there doing whatever he is doing. Different people have different shades of beliefs. Some believe God is up there controlling our daily lives. Others believe that God has given people free will and is simply where we go when we are done with our lives. They all believe there IS a God though.

Therefore on the other side of that equation are people who do not believe in God. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme if they do not believe because they just choose not to believe - or if they do not believe because they are waiting for some proof to appear. All of those people do not believe, for whatever reason.

Let's say someone is an Atheist. A is "anti/not" and theist is "God belief". So an Atheist is simply someone who does not believe in God. It's the whole root of the word. This person doesn't have to justify why they are not believing in God. It could be because no proof has changed their mind. It could be they are logical and feel logic demands proof. It could be that they don't care at all. Who knows. They just don't believe. It's like asking someone why he doesn't believe in marriage. Maybe he doesn't want to be tied down. Maybe he hasn't met the right woman yet. Maybe he just likes to be alone. We are all unique different individuals and I imagine every person's reason would be slightly different.

OK, on to agnostic. A - Anti. Gnostic - logical belief in God. This person claims to say "well I don't believe, but I don't disbelieve either. I don't have proof either way." But let's look at that logically. They do NOT believe. This isn't a Shroedinger's cat, hovering between two states. We are talking about a belief here. If you don't believe in God, then you don't believe in God. To say "well I'm waiting for proof" means that you do not believe in God but if proof appeared, you would. Heck, I have to think that any human being, if a flaming bush appeared before them, levitated them in the ground and let them have multi-day-long conversations with their dead loved ones, and then said "I am God", would probably have some sort of belief grow. To say that you will only believe or that you are "waiting to believe" when you have proof is meaningless. God is not about proof. God is about belief. That is the whole point of God. And to say "I might feel differently at some future point if certain things happened" is also meaningless. That would be true for any of us. Someone who is rabidly anti-abortion might suddenly feel differently if their wife was on the point of death and the only way to save her was to abort the fetus. A belief is only valid in the moment in which it is claimed. All beliefs are subject to future changes.

Any belief (or non-belief) is conditional. Your belief that you will never marry is conditional until you find a gorgeous, intelligent, wealthy, loving woman who falls completely in love with you and says she wants to marry you. Your belief that you will never be good at baseball is conditional until this wealthy woman hires you a personal set of baseball trainers and builds you your own field, and you are trained until you are minor-league quality and quite happy with your skills. Your belief that you are not a good cook is conditional until you go to cook school and learn all the techniques involved. And so on, and so on. Any belief you have is what you feel at the moment. None of these beliefs are necessarily what you will feel in 10 years with changed experiences, information, education and maturity.

So back to the issue at hand. If you believe in God, then you believe in God. If you do NOT believe in God, it doesn't matter if you claim it's because you simply don't (atheist) or that you might if you had proof (agnostic). In both cases you are still NOT saying "I believe in God, I am a believer". If you cannot stand up and say that, then you fall into the "non-believer" bucket. That's what believing in a God is all about, standing up and claiming your belief with a whole heart and whole mind.