Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[One Above All]

Okay, firstly how did I go against the common usage? I specifically said that agnosticism is about the supposed inability to justify either atheism or theism. Justification is usually considered a necessary component of knowledge.

Really? Ever met a gnostic theist who justified his position rationally?

Secondly, that etymology is just sloppy and cannot be outright be used like that. Otherwise we get hilariously false results like this:

"a" - without
float - staying above the ground

therefore, "afloat" should mean one is on the ground.... except it it means to be above the ground. The alpha primitive "a" does not unilaterally mean a negation of the word in front of it; language is rarely so uniform.

True. Retracted.

No it isn't and I just addressed that. You're 1) conflating the definition of atheism with something that atheists and agnostics share and 2) rebranding atheism as if it were that commonality between agnostics and atheists.

I never said all "agnostics" were atheists, if you'll notice. At best, I said they were bullshitters, since their position is like me asking- You know what, just read my car analogy. I'm not gonna quote it for you. Regardless, even that would be a stretch.

This is patently absurd. As I just illustrated, this is like calling the number 0 a negative number simply because it isn't a positive number.

Apples and oranges, as well as cherry picking. Numbers have many groups. Rational and irrational, positive and negative, perfect squares and imperfect squares, integers and non-integers, and so on. You just happened to pick a group where zero is a "special" number. Belief only has two groups: belief or non-belief. Why didn't you pick rational and irrational, or perfect and imperfect squares, or integers and non-integers?

The question isn't "belief vs. lack of belief", it's "belief vs. contrary belief". But there is obviously a middle ground which agnostics take, which is abstention. This is a lack of belief, but you're kidding yourself if you're claiming that's atheism. Perhaps another analogy will help.

Abstention from making an opinion? Are "agnostics" brain-dead or something?
Everything that can form an opinion does. It's just how our brains are wired. If you've heard or thought about it, you've formed an opinion. At first, it will most likely be a flimsy opinion and subject to rapid and seemingly random change, like when I first heard that, just because something is 100% probable, doesn't mean it will happen, and, inversely, that just because something has a probability of occurring equal to 0%, doesn't mean it won't happen. This still fucks my brain every time I think of it. Anyway, the only way an "agnostic" could exist, and that would be allowing for several light-years worth of leeway here, is if he/she had never heard or even thought about the concept of deities.

Say I'm asked whether the proposition "Life exists elsewhere in the universe than Earth" is true or not. Clearly that proposition can only be true or false. However, given the current lack of evidence supporting that they do in fact exist, I cannot say they do. Likewise, I have no good reason to think the proposition is impossible. The only sensible course is to say "I don't know", becoming the equivalent of an agnostic on this topic. Sure, you can say "Ah, but you lack belief in the existence of ETs, so you're an a-ET-ist!" But that doesn't follow, since I'm clearly not saying Ets don't exist. I cannot assess the proposition's truth value, so I cannot rationally take a side. That is what agnostics typically do on the gods question.

So either "agnostics" are equivocating, or you (you specifically; I don't know if you call yourself an "agnostic") have no concept of what atheism is.
Gnostic atheists (like myself) do, in fact, assert the non-existent of gods. Agnostic atheists do not. Regardless, atheism doesn't say jack about that. It says "I don't believe". It doesn't say "I'm saying they don't exist". You are conflating rational justifications with opinions. Humans are not rational, period. At least not 100%. You can have an opinion without any justification, and you can have an opinion without saying or even believing that it is 100% true. For lack of justification, you need only look at theists. Regarding not believing that something is 100% true, you need only look at scientists.