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Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
Which brings us back to the true meaning of the word "agnostic," which has been a question of some debate in this thread. To clarify (and I hope I'm not merely repeating what you said earlier...) an agnostic is NOT "in the middle" between theists and atheists.
An atheist believes that there is no god. Typically their case is made from a rationalist/materialist set of assumptions about the universe. The fact is, god's existence cannot be proven, and religion's claims about the material world are generally pretty easy to prove false. Ergo: religion's views about other things are also wrong.
A theist believes that there is a god, and that knowledge of said god comes from faith, etc. No amount of evidence will disprove the existence of god, because belief was never based on evidence in the first place.
An agnostic believes that the ultimate truth of the universe is unknowable. Note that this is different from saying "I don't know, but something might convince me. It is, as kermitology said earlier, kind of a proposition of infinitude about the universe, and an admission that we are not in a position where we can understand it. To wit: rational/materialist belief systems result in truths that can be proven within a rational/materialist framework. An agnostic acknowledges that there may be something exterior to that paradigm, but also dismisses the notion that simply having faith in some equally earth-bound human production (such as a church or religious text) is merely to pretend that churches have access to truth that is by definition unknowable.
I know which belief system I stand by. But some clarity as to the terms is valuable, in my opinion.
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I disagree quite a bit with this definition. I believe one can be agnostic about something that is knowable, just not with the current evidence.
Dawkins calls this temporary agnosticism in practice, versus permanent agnosticism in practice. Many people would try to say that a god would never be provable, and try to lump it in the permanent branch, but honestly, I do think that someday we will be able to confirm or deny it. It might be a long time from now, but it should be able to be answered, as the existence of an entity...is not an abstract thing.