Atheist or really Agnostic

[xpastor]

To truly be an atheist is to claim that there in no God. But that very claim is to pose an absolute negation about a supreme being. It would be extremely hard to prove such an absolute negation. ...

I could equally well say, "To be truly a theist is to claim with absolute certainty that there is a God. It would be extremely hard to prove such an absolute assertion."

One of the dictionary definitions of agnostic is "a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic" and I understand that to hold in religious opinions. The agnostic refuses to commit to asserting either that there probably is a God or that there is probably no God.

Another way of looking at it is Dawkins' scale of atheism from 1 - 7. One is absolute certainty that there is a God, and in spite of some bullshit I believe few, if any, Christians fall into that category. Seven is absolute certainty that there is no God, and few atheists would claim that. A few years ago on the Friendly Atheist Forum we did a poll on that, and the vast majority rated themselves as a 6, for all practical purposes pretty sure that there is no God, because all the evidence points that way, but no amount of empirical evidence ever adds up to 100% certainty.

By definition an agnostic would occupy 4, the midpoint on the scale, equally uncertain that God exists or does not exist.

I find it silly to try to strip away the plain meaning of a useful and well-understood word like atheist. Pure sophistry.