CONTEXT: My sister (calls herself a christian but dabbles in astrology and fortunetellers strangely enough nor does she think genesis is true, which makes me want to facepalm. For simplicity's sake, she is just very confused) made a bold statement that my brother believed in a deity so the next day we both went to go see him (not because of that, we just wanted to see him) and I asked him while she was still there (she left after about 10 minutes).

I recently had a conversation with my brother about religion. He calls himself an agnostic and I call myself an atheist. I asked him: do you actively believe in any deities? I don't know was his answer so I said: It's a yes or no question, how can you not know if you believe something? If I were to ask you if you believed in minotaurs would you say the same? After pointing this out and implying that he might just be special pleading, he changed his answer to no. So I told him: Welcome to the club. He asked me does god exist? I said I have no idea. But then I asked him why he only used the singular form, does he think a singular deity is more probable? What reason does he have to think that? Does he have a bias? So he backtracked after I pointed this out. I also, during the conversation, pointed out that he appeared to conflate the terms "know" and "believe." The questions involving belief and knowledge are separate--they are not synonymous. Not only that, not believing something is not the same as believing the opposite. I don't believe in deities because I have seen no good reason to believe. I'm also unconvinced by the arguments and pitiful evidence given by god believers. Also a person who is unconvinced by a claim does not have the burden of proof, the person making the claim does. It's a fool's errand to disprove that which has not been proven (also known as an argument from ignorance). So after a 45 minute respectful back and forth conversation we both conceded that by my definition of atheist--he would be an atheist and by his definition of agnostic, I would also be an agnostic. There was one specific distinction though, he is more of an apathist or he is more apathetic towards religion--he doesn't think it causes as much harm as I do/he thinks the harm it causes in modern times is trivial, while I'm more of an antitheist (only when need be) and I think religious thought holds back the human race in more ways than one.