What do you call one who believes in a higher power but doesn't call it "God"? [closed]

Solution 1:

There are multiple categories to this. I'll arrange them in order of strictness:

1. Atheist: Believes absolutely in no higher power (however this definition has shifted somewhat to mean that they are agnostic as below, but in practical terms a higher power is irrelevant);
2. Agnostic: Not sure in the existence of a higher power either way;
3. Deist: Believes in a god but not one which has been revealed and is only observable in nature generally not from supernatural observances or revelation;
4. Theist: Believes in a higher power that has a person and is revealed in nature; and
5. Religious: Someone with a more firm set of beliefs and frameworks around said higher power.

An important aspect of the semantics would be to ask does God to you refer to a Christian god as in this situation. Capitalised God means the God, as in the Arabic Al-Ilah, meaning the God. Which is a different concept to the polytheistic Greek gods. Not just a higher power but the source of unity of all things. Whereas in traditional Jewish culture there was YHWH (pronunciation uncertain) which was the personal name for what they saw as the one God known as El (even though El himself was a god of the Canaanites).

To shift away from the Abrahamic traditions, in my limited knowledge Hinduism has a concept of the Atma or the universal consciousness which is in all things. And the Hindu structure has many facets of God and gods that can be interpreted in a strict Western sense as monotheist, panentheist, pantheist, or polytheistic. But is more about trying to find the whole in the divided.

Solution 2:

What do you call a person who believes in a higher power but doesn't call that higher power "God"?

The generic theist works fine here:

belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world

Theism is belief in some form of god/gods, but it does not require (or imply) respect for all or any other religions. The second use requested is therefore different:

Someone who respects every religion as a subject of study, or a valid belief system, but does not believe entirely any religion's faith himself?

The closest set of words is perhaps that you "believe in religious tolerance". The set of beliefs also nears Universalism, but "Universalist" by itself may make it unclear as to exactly what you mean (as there are also Unitarians, Christian Universalists, etc). You might also just say you are "spiritual but not religious" (a popular non-committal sort of statement).