Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
The only people who use a different definition that I know of are the people who don't know the words and simply use agnostic to indicate "I don't know."
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You might want to tell that to Richard Dawkins, who included a chapter called "The Poverty of Agnosticism" in his book "The God Delusion". And no, he wasn't talking about the shortcoming of a "view that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist".
As for Wikipedia:
Rowe, William L. (1998). "Agnosticism". In Edward Craig. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-07310-3. "In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas an atheist and a theist believe and disbelieve, respectfully.
Yes, it goes on to cite the "strict" definition, but at least it recognizes the fact that it is used in multiple ways
^ Rowe, William L. (1998). "Atheism". In Edward Craig. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415073103. Retrieved 2011-04-09. "As commonly understood, atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. So an atheist is someone who disbelieves in God, whereas a theist is someone who believes in God. Another meaning of "atheism" is simply nonbelief in the existence of God, rather than positive belief in the nonexistence of God. ...an atheist, in the broader sense of the term, is someone who disbelieves in every form of deity, not just the God of traditional Western theology."
Again, multiple interpretations, not Atheism means X and only X