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Concept
Apatheism
Summary
Apatheism (ˌæpəˈθiːɪzəm; a portmanteau of apathy and theism) is the attitude of apathy toward the existence or non-existence of God(s). It is more of an attitude rather than a belief, claim, or belief system. The term was coined by Robert Nash, theology professor at Mercer University, in 2001.
An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or rejecting any claims that gods exist or do not exist. The existence of a god or gods is not rejected, but may be designated irrelevant. One of the first recorded apatheists was arguably Denis Diderot (1713-1784), who wrote: "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God."
Philosopher Trevor Hedberg has called apatheism "uncharted territory in the philosophy of religion". Political theorist and constitutional law scholar, Adam Scott Kunz, has further defined apatheism as "the philosophical attitude of indifference, both public and private, to (1) the question of the existence of a deity, (2) the metaphysical and practical value of loyalty to that deity, and/or (3) the interaction of that deity with the natural world".
Apatheism considers the question of the existence or nonexistence of deities to be fundamentally irrelevant in every way that matters. This position should not be understood as a skeptical position in a manner similar to that of, for example, atheists or agnostics who question the existence of deities or whether we can know anything about them.
Adam Scott Kunz has argued that apatheism's opposite is zeal, just as atheism's opposite is theism. Instead of viewing apatheism as a different form of belief, Kunz argues that apatheism and zeal can interact with atheism and theism on a two-dimensional spectrum similar to a political spectrum. A person can be a theist, while at the same time have an attitude of apatheism (such beliefs are common in deism) or zeal toward questions of existence, loyalty, or involvement of deity. Likewise, an atheist can be either apatheistic or zealous.
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