Well firstly I think you showed that piece to me before, and I corrected the origin of the word "atheist". The 'a' doesn't come from English grammar, but from Greek. ('a-theos' literally means "without god" in ancient greek).
Secondly, your argument that atheism and agnosticism are one and the same is invalid. As you quite rightly say, to be an agnostic is to say that the existence of a deity is unknown or unknowable, but this only covers knowledge. An person could claim that God is unknown or unknowable but still believe it exists. Indeed I find that most rational theists will admit this. A supernatural force that has no explanation is by definition unknown, and so people who claim their God is supernatural are agnostics and theists. Now the gnostic theists will claim that "supernatural" is simply a mocking word used by atheists, and that God is perfectly natural and has been proven through some argument or through nature.
In philosophy, knowledge is often described as a subset of belief, or as "true, justified belief". You can believe something and have no knowledge of it, but you cannot know something and have no belief of it, because this is a contradiction. Just to clarify, knowledge here is describing "absolute knowledge" rather than relative. You could argue that some people (like some creationists) "know" that fossils support evolution but simply do not believe it, but this is not the type of knowledge we are talking about. Knowledge in the agnosticism argument is all about the actual truth value of claims, not what people claim to know.
Secondly, your argument that atheism and agnosticism are one and the same is invalid. As you quite rightly say, to be an agnostic is to say that the existence of a deity is unknown or unknowable, but this only covers knowledge. An person could claim that God is unknown or unknowable but still believe it exists. Indeed I find that most rational theists will admit this. A supernatural force that has no explanation is by definition unknown, and so people who claim their God is supernatural are agnostics and theists. Now the gnostic theists will claim that "supernatural" is simply a mocking word used by atheists, and that God is perfectly natural and has been proven through some argument or through nature.
In philosophy, knowledge is often described as a subset of belief, or as "true, justified belief". You can believe something and have no knowledge of it, but you cannot know something and have no belief of it, because this is a contradiction. Just to clarify, knowledge here is describing "absolute knowledge" rather than relative. You could argue that some people (like some creationists) "know" that fossils support evolution but simply do not believe it, but this is not the type of knowledge we are talking about. Knowledge in the agnosticism argument is all about the actual truth value of claims, not what people claim to know.
