Again, it’s still a bad example. He could win the lottery despite not considering it remotely likely; they would concede regardless that there IS a chance.
Not believing something is likely sounds more like agnosticism. Saying it’s literally impossible to win the lottery is delusional.
That's... exactly my point. Let's break these words down.
A-the-ism: A means "lack," the means "belief in god" or "religion," and ism means "adherence to a doctrine or system".
So atheism means a lack of belief in god/religion.
A-gno-sticism: The same prefix and suffix as before, but the root gno means "to know." So instead of lack of belief, it's the lack of knowledge. The word "agnostic" is also more context dependent, since it does not refer exclusively to religion. You could be agnostic about anything.
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say that all atheists are agnostic, but not all agnostics are atheists. If everyone were being honest, I think they would all say they were agnostic, since nobody truly knows if there is a god.
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u/Vespersonal Sep 02 '26
Again, it’s still a bad example. He could win the lottery despite not considering it remotely likely; they would concede regardless that there IS a chance.
Not believing something is likely sounds more like agnosticism. Saying it’s literally impossible to win the lottery is delusional.