Agnostic: a pointless term?

[Davka]

I'm kind of disappointed that afaict (having just browsed the thread) not one person has raised the actual philosophical position of Agnosticism.

There are three major types of agnostic:

"I don't know if there is a god." This is the position most people think of.
"I don't know and I don't care." This is the cop-out position of those who don't want to be bothered to think.

But neither one is the type of agnostic for whom the term was originally coined. That position is:

"I do not know, nobody knows, because the answer to this question is, by its nature, unknowable."

This is the Russell's Teapot position. It's the answer to theists who claim that there is a God, but that God cannot be measured, tested, confirmed or denied. A God who does not interact with the Universe in any meaningful or predictable way is unknowable. It cannot be known that such a god exists or does not exist, and if it does exist, it is irrelevant to us because it is unknowable. It may as well not exist.

So remember, whenever you answer some silly "gotcha" question (like Kalaam) with "I don't know and neither do you," you are flirting with the "hard agnostic" approach - you do not know if there is a god, and you cannot know if there is a god.