Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[Mister Agenda]

Like theist and agnostic atheist have sects. Its the loud mouth sickoes that give us a bad name. The you that mock, belittle, and otherwise dehumanize people that don't think like them.

Mocking and belittling seems to constitute the entirety of your 'contribution' to this forum.

---

When it comes to religious position, I am asking for the truth about them; specifically, what they believe in. Agnosticism is not saying "I do/do not believe", therefore it is meaningless as a term to describe belief. Agnosticism (and its counterpart, gnosticism) are used to describe certainty. What self-proclaimed agnostics are trying to do is say "I don't believe, but I don't not believe either", which is utter bullshit. You can't "not believe" but also "not not believe". It's meaningless and makes no sense.

What self-proclaimed agnostics are saying is that they don't know, because that is what the word means. Belief is a separate dimension, and there's no reason an agnostic couldn't be a believer anyway. As far as neither believing nor not believing, isn't that pretty much the same as not having an opinion on whether something is actually true or not? That doesn't seem obviously self-contradictory to me.

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.

Or hasn't come to a conclusion about them.

---

Because those groups aren't like this one. And no, belief has 3 groups: belief, lack of or abstention from belief, disbelief (or contrary belief). You're doing exactly what I said you were doing, and something you've refused to address. "Atheist" is a term whose 'meaning' has been culturally developed (like all words) to convey the concept of people who believe no gods exist. What you're doing is essentially changing what people most often mean by "atheist" such that you can say that "agnostics are bullshitters". But to do so, you are equivocating on the terms people use.

The inclusive 'lack of belief' definition, which includes negative as well as positive atheists, has been used by atheist writers for centuries. It's true that nonatheists have not listened to atheist sources historically in formulating their definitions for 'atheist' and 'atheism'.

---

---

And I don't actually think agnostic atheism is necessarily even a coherent position.

It's not. "I don't know, therefore God doesn't exist" is no more coherent than "I don't know, therefore God exists."

I would really love to see an example of an agnostic atheist making that claim, but since that claim really has nothing to do with the position of agnostic atheism (don't know and don't believe), you probably shouldn't put yourself out looking for one.