Atheist vs. Agnostic
- "Definition of ATHEIST : one who believes that there is no deity."
-- merriam-webster.com - "Definition of AGNOSTIC 1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2: a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something (political agnostics)"
-- merriam-webster.com
An atheist believes there is no god, while an agnostic says there is no strong evidence either way. Some people will say they are agnostic because there is a negative social connotation to atheist, but if you ask them they will say there is likely no god, but they cannot prove it. I cannot prove there is no god, but I'm pretty sure there isn't, so I say I'm an atheist. Baggini (author of Atheism: A Short Introduction) says, "In the absence of any good reasons to believe outlandish claims, we rightly disbelieve them, we don't just suspend judgement."
Baggini goes further to explain that it is dogmatic to leave no possibility that one is wrong, and that one can reject the dogmatism of both believers and non-believers without having to be an agnostic. He says, "For instance, an atheist who says that they believe there are no good reasons for being anything other than an atheist and that they themselves cannot imagine a situation arising in which they would give up their beliefs is still not being dogmatic, just as long as they acknowledge the possibility that they could be wrong."
Harbour (An Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism) says that "Agnosticism is the studied art of fence-sitting in the face of fields neither of which offers greener grass. Alternatively, it is an absence of belief in virtue of an absence of arguments: no belief concerning God's existence because there are no compelling arguments for either atheism or theism." He is making a positive argument for atheism as "the plausible and probably correct belief that God does not exist." He is a bit harsh toward agnostics, but he has a point: that you can believe there is no god and still leave room for new evidence.