My Fellow Atheist

[Tiberius]

When I speak of agnosticism, I am referring to it as it is understood and practiced today by the general agnostic population. It may have a deeper philisophical meaning that is more complex, but I am not going to get into the history of word meaning and semantics.

The general agnostic population are wrong, that's my point. There isn't a "deeper" meaning to the word; agnosticism has always meant what Thomas Huxley defined it as. The current modern usage (which luckily is falling out of use given debates like this) is inaccurate and more closely related to apatheism that anything else. To give agnosticism as a position in a poll opposed to atheism (and "believer") is ambiguous. You either believe or you don't...theism or atheism. If you want to incorporate agnosticism, you must extend the poll in 4 directions:

Agnostic Atheist
Agnostic Theist
Gnostic Atheist
Gnostic Theist

I will definately check out that essay. The only reason I paint agnostics with that brush is that unlike you, those are the only agnostics I have ever met.

Then I suggest you look around the atheist community online. They all seem to know what they are talking about...well, most of them.

What do you mean by enlightenment? Are you speaking of it in the buddhist sense?

I believe in the enlightenment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

I find it interesting that you state your 'beleif' in science, I never thought science required belief to begin with.

Science requires a belief in empiricism, materialism (at least weakly), the scientific method, etc. If you don't believe in all these, science is based on nothing at all. These are the core assumptions at work for science to operate. They've done quite well so far (in terms of technological advancement) but they are still assumptions nonetheless.

I just want to make it clear on a semantic level that lack of belief does not equal belief. Me not 'believing' in god requires no faith.

I'm well aware of that...I never argued otherwise.

I am not part of some new age fad 'thought school' that throws around metaphysical/string theory terminology and calls it enlightenment.

(Bolding mine). If you haven't heard about the enlightenment, and you equate it to some throwing around of new age ideas, I suggest you actually read up on the subject. Most of the technological, social, and economical development of the last 200 years is based around enlightenment ideals.

If you won't change the poll, I'll just vote agnostic since it is a good descriptor of how I view the world, more so than atheism. Atheism describes something I don't believe in. Agnosticism describes something I do believe in.