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Originally Posted by lakedude
I looked up the meaning of the words you used and they don't mean the same thing as what is in the poll. The afterlife thing is critical to the poll BTW. Theists and diests each belive in both a god and an afterlife. Atheists belive in neither and agnostics are just not sure about either.
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Deists do not believe in an afterlife. Deists believe some supreme being got the whole thing started, but does not interact with us (now or after we die). From my dictionary (Mac OS built-in):
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deism noun
belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind.
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There is a wide range of definitions for atheism and agnosticism. Strictly speaking, atheism is simply no belief in god, where agnosticism is belief that one does not know if god exists.
The most extreme, hard core belief is the hard agnostic who believes it is impossible to know if god exists, closely followed by the hard atheist who is certain that there is no god. Note that "impossible to know" is a stronger "belief" statement than is "certain there is no" as the former is speaking globally, while the latter may just be a personal statement.
At the opposite extreme of non-theism is the soft atheist who knows nothing about any god (thus, has no belief, much as those who have never heard of the Invisible Pink Unicorn diety have no belief in the IPU), and the soft agnostic who just doesn't care (which is more properly referred to as an being apathetic).
Near the middle of these two extremes of atheism and agnosticism is the atheist who doesn't believe in any of the gods described by the various religions (that person just believes in one less god than a monotheist), and the agnostic who is uncertain about God (a fair percentage of those filling the pews on Sunday!).
Consider that a Hindu, for example, may be either (for example) an Islamic atheist, or an Islamic agnostic. That is, a theist may think different religions just have different concepts of the same God (typical of Jews, Christians, and Moslems about each other), or think that everyone of a different religion does not believe in God (the only true One that they believe in -- typical of fundamentalists of every stripe).
-- Alan (veracitorian)