Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[MindForgedManacle]

I disbelieve in Santa AND I also believe Santa does not exist.

Yes, and if you ask people what they mean by an atheist, they're talking about the latter with regards to the existence of gods.

There are 2 truth claims when it comes to gods;

1. god/gods exists

2. god/gods do not exist

Atheism is a response to the first truth claim, it is not necessarily the second.

Many atheists do take the second position, but only being unconvinced of the first is what defines atheism.

Except pretty much no one actually USES the word that way. Usage determines what words mean, so it's kind of important to actually answer what's being asked.

I value using terms correctly, and correcting people when they use them incorrectly.

Well that's funny, seeing as you're using a definition of a word hardly any english speaker would expect.

Yeah... MFM you're being extremely intellectually dishonest. "Lacks belief" is part of the definition of atheism, and whether you like it or not, can be, and is often, independent of "disbelief". Get over yourself. You are not the semantics police.

Again, did you notice the first part stating one dominant usage of it is actually "disbelief"?

Anyway, you've missed the point again. The reason I asked you what a dictionary is was because I was trying to get you to see that you're using a dictionary as a false authority. For example, I recently became a feminist. However, I've seen absurd arguments for why feminism is needed by some of my fellow feminists. They'll sometimes say something that amounts to "Well, the dictionary defines feminism as a movement for the equality of women, which means that women are not treated equally. Therefore we need feminism." But that's clearly a bogus argument. A dictionary saying ideology X is Y doesn't really tell you that such is true, it just tells you that some people use the word that way.

And that's fine, you can use words however you want to. But understand that there are consequences as far as coherence and relevance are concerned when you start ignoring and changing what people usually mean by words.