What's the diference between an agnostic and skeptic?

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Seriously, what's the difference? They both mean that they are unsure wether or not any deity exists or not.

[°Leprechaun]

The simple answer is that it depends on how you define those two words.
My belief is simply that we can't know anything beyond what we experience
by our senses. Hence, in Christian terminology, you could say that I am
a "doubting Thomas". That description fits me well, because my name is
"Thomas". Many people are uncomfortable with uncertainty and feel
that the word "doubt" is a bad thing. Which is more important?
A belief in a deity or a belief in eternal life? Eternal life is literally impossible in the sense that nobody can actually live an infinite amount of time. We can speculate that our "self" will never
die in the sense of nonexistence, but even if that is true, we can only at
any given point in time, live a finite amount of time, unless as is
hypothesized by some that our existence extends backward towards an
infinite amount of time. A somewhat bizarre sounding idea, and, even if true,
would also be logically impossible to comprehend, at least by a finite mind, since it would mean that our existence had no actual beginning.

[Beet]

In my experience, "skeptic" is a word people use to describe themselves when they want to make themselves look superior. The opposite of "denier":

"Gee, I'm a 'skeptic' in global warming. I mean, I totally agree that the evidence supports it, it is caused by people, and we need to do major things to stop it, but I'm still skeptical." - said no one ever.

[Marokai Backbeat]

In my experience, "skeptic" is a word people use to describe themselves when they want to make themselves look superior. The opposite of "denier":

"Gee, I'm a 'skeptic' in global warming. I mean, I totally agree that the evidence supports it, it is caused by people, and we need to do major things to stop it, but I'm still skeptical." - said no one ever.

A word can often be used by multiple different people with multiple different intentions.

Some of the people I've known who describe themselves as skeptics are among the smartest people are know, and some are incredibly ignorant.

I've always used the term as a way of expressing I am wary of dogma and fervent organizations built on unfalsifiable claims, and will change my opinion based on evidence. If you're deliberately discarding actual, empirical, hard evidence on something, you're not a skeptic, you're just unaware of what the term actually means.

[DemPGH]

I think if you go with traditional definitions of those terms, a Skeptic is skeptical about literally everything, including objective reality. That's not me. That school of thought was founded long ago before modernity, technology, etc.

Agnostic is a much more modern (19th cent.) term, and tends to be in the context of natural/supernatural. An Agnostic will say that you cannot know anything beyond the physical. That describes me.

So I think there's a difference, but in current times using current context, I think they're really pretty similar.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Just restricting both to the religion realm, not expanding skeptic to people who are skeptical about everything, I think the difference is that self-describing as "skeptic" begins to offer a bit of a motivation, whereas "agnostic" doesn't.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Simple: all agnostics are skeptics, but not all skeptics are agnostics.  It's like a square and a rectangle.

[Slander and/or Libel]

I don't know that all agnostics are skeptics.

[Georg Ebner]

I am sceptical, but not agnostical. I can perceive the world empirically, but cannot prove its existence rationally (what doesn't matter, anyway).

[Ban my account ffs!]

To me a skeptic does not give faith to the issue at hand but seeks the truth empirically.  In matters of religion, a skeptic will never find the truth.

An agnostic is someone who doesn't care enough to have faith /or/ seek the truth empirically.  They wait and see.  In matters of religion they will forever wait and never see.

Funny that you had to drag global warming into this beet.  Your faith in the 'science' must be unwavering!  You are the 97%!  But so am I and that field of pseudoscience is still so full of bullsh**t its no wonder they complain about methane so much!

Keep wiggle matching those tree rings!

Did I tell you I give 100% accurate palm readings?  I call it dendropalmchronobuffalochipology.  I stare at lines and then feed them into my hockeystick generator.  You can't deny it!  And you can't be skeptical either!  97% of the crap statistics I just mangled into 97% say so!  Plus I practically have a nobel prize!