Agnostics are not Atheists and they deserve their own forum.

[dmallind]

14. No - he's stating that agnosticism is in fact nothing to do with belief. Atheism is not mentioned.

Saying agnostics are not atheists is like saying women are not atheists. Both demonstrably wrong, and utterly irrelevant.

I am 100% agnostic

I am 100% atheistic

Challenge those however you choose to, and you will fail.

There is a reason atheists and agnostics are lumped together here and it's nothing to do with them being either the same thing OR mutually exclusive as you suggest. It is entirely to do with the demonization of the word atheist, and both the intentionally deceptive and innocently ignorant misuses of the word (not sure which category yours is in yet). This means people need multiple words to describe one thing, and they end up misusing them both.

Here's the sole, absolute and integral way to tell who's an atheist. They answer "No" to "Do you believe that any gods exist in reality?".

Note that the question is NOT "Do any gods exist?" and that the question cannot accurately be answered "I don't know".

How is it possible for a person who can understand that question to not know what they believe? It is not possible, obviously. I know whether I believe Obama will one day be added to Mt. Rushmore. I don't. I can only answer the question "Will Obama be on Rushmore one day" with either an estimated probability or "I don't know" however. I know whether I believe it will happen - I can't be sure whether it will or not.

Atheism is an answer to an analog of the first question. "Do you believe any gods exist?' No = atheist. Yes = theist. No possibility of other answers

Agnosticism is an answer to the analog of the second. "Do we know that any gods exist?" No = agnostic. Yes we know and yes they do = gnostic theist. Yes we do and no they don't = gnostic atheist.

Why then combine them on a message board? Because too few people understand the above; too many atheists who do are too timid or scared of "offending" those who don't by using the correct word for themselves; too many shallow thinkers believe the label agnostic means they never have to answer or even consider the first question; too many believers assume they are synonyms for strong and weak atheism.