Check out this great blog post by Shaunphilly (See my blogroll.) Shaun does a great job of explaining the popular misconceptions of both of these words. It’s short, elegant, accurate, and well worth a read.
Agnosticism is not some fence position between atheism and theism. It is not some place where you can sit and feel superior to atheists because you aren’t being judgmental towards belief in god. Rather, it is what you call yourself when you don’t know what an atheist means when they say they don’t believe in god. It is a way to weasel out of answering the question of whether you believe in god or not. The answer “I’m agnostic” is answering a different question, not fence-sitting.
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I thank you for the compliment.
And he’s right, it is a smashing good blog post.
Posted by shaunphilly | March 24, 2009, 4:55 pmI find that usually I will refer to myself as an agnostic in my normal life just to avoid the hassle of explaining it to people.
Posted by Watcher | March 24, 2009, 4:56 pm