I recently met someone who called themselves “an Apatheist”. I’m sure I have met many apatheists previously, but no one, as far as I recall, termed themselves that way.
A Theist believes there is a God (or polytheists – gods). An Atheist believes there is no God. The term Agnostic can describe two positions, and I wish we had distinguishing terms: the belief that it is not possible to know if there is a God or not; and the position of, “I have not made a decision of there is a God or not.”
An apatheist is not concerned whether God exists or not, and understands whether God exists or not as in no way changing anything about their lives. Apatheism can, then, be applied to theists and to atheists. Zealous atheists can strongly attempt to destroy the faith of theists, they can be evangelical in their desire to spread atheism. They are often referred to as Anti-theists. Apatheistic atheists can understand that there is no God, but this belief of theirs makes no difference to their lives. Similarly, there can be apatheistic theists – they believe there is a God, but this belief makes no difference to the way they live.
An apatheist might say that if it were possible to demonstrate the existence of God or not – their lives would not change. The Apatheist I met expressed that it is far more important to put energy into the way we live as humans together on this planet than to put energy into whether there is a God or not.
