Agnostic or Atheist?

[lostcarpark]

I had a discussion with someone at Eastercon who argued that atheists are just as bad as believers, and that the only tenable position is agnosticism.

I argued that the key difference between a believer and an atheist is that a true believer doesn't "believe", they know that their god exists, and no evidence to the contrary will change their mind. An atheist, on the other hand, believes there is no god, but in the majority of cases will accept that the non-existence of god is in fact unprovable, and would be will to change their position if the evidence changed.

However, a very good friend then insisted the position I describe is not atheism at all, and is in fact agnosticism.

For the record, I would describe agnosticism as fence sitting and saying "I don't believe or disbelieve as it's impossible to prove either way."

I'd like to hear other people's views on the topic, and would like to know if my understanding is off the mark.

Comments

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Your last statement hurts my head!

As you'll see in this thread, there seem to be as many definitions as respondents.

[alan-ie.livejournal.com]

true my punctuation could be clearer

http://www.answers.com/topic/atheism
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism {see definition b}

and as we can see athiests {as opposed to linguists} seem to be the only ones confused by the definition
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-definitions.html

the simplest way to look at it is mathematically beliefs can be {athiest} or {theist {with the sub set pantheist} and a subset for every named group}

agnostic is a set that intersects both {and all their subsets} which believe that whatever belief they hold is less important than the fact that belief is not-provable and thus open to change {however unlikely they think that change will be}

so you could claim everyone belongs to 1 of two groups
agnostic vs believer
theist vs athiest

believers in athiesim
believers in theisim

agnostic leaning to athiest
agnostic leaning to theist

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

This conversation has descended to a level that only a language geek could be interested. Excellent.

It's all very well to argue about the correct meaning, and while it's useful to understand, it's also important to understand that a significant proportion of the population may be using the term incorrectly.

[alan-ie.livejournal.com]

yeah but you can't really ever come to a conclusion on anything other than liguisticly correct meaning, as common use meaning is changeable via just one convincing meme.
just look at a term such as heathen
common use {anyone lacking christian religion within english speaking christian community {including athiest , agnostic, pagan, muslim, jewish etc.}
correct use {continued practicioner of local/native/indiginous form of religion after the rise of christianity in the local area, from the fact that the townsfolk have converted but those living out on the heath/country/land continue to practice their "heath"en ways}

any argument based on common usage will differ based on the education/intrest level within the locality of the observer.

like there ar many places in this country where most people will refer to those with telescopes as astrologers, but it will never make them correct.

at teast not after we seperated the science bit from the tradition-superstition fluff when we coined the term astronomers for the ones doing purely scintific observations. {and the other lot stopped using telescopes as the maps of movements of 'signifigant' astral bodies were all formulated accuratly generations ago, so they just use their charts to do their 'predictions'}