mr roboto
Footballguy
Please show me where I said they were equivalent. I don't know what the hell you are talking about. But both of those assertions are different than agnosticism.A lack of belief in something is not equivalent to a belief in nothing. No matter how much you want it to be the case.Well then technically so are theists. That's not the point. The point is what you believe, not what you can objectively prove. That's what the words 'atheist, agnostic, theist' mean. They are systems of belief.But you cannot know whether there is a god or not, so all atheists would be agnostic.This is why the atheism/agnosticism thing isn't just a matter of splitting hairs. "It is not possible for a theistic deity to exist" is a completely different argument than "There is not enough evidence of a theistic deity to justify the belief in one."
It goes without saying that labeling the first one "atheism" and the second one "agnosticism" is an imperfect solution. Any time you put any label on a particular point of view -- conservatism, liberalism, materialism, etc. -- you always lose some nuance, but those labels are still useful shorthand. It definitely doesn't help when people try to conflate two different schools of thought as if they were the same thing.
IMO saying you are sure there is no god makes you an atheist. Saying you don't know makes you an agnostic.