The current popular definition of agnosticism is as someone who is neither a theist nor an atheist - as someone who is “undecided” when it comes to the question of god’s existence. I’ve come a lot of self-proclaimed agnostics, who like to claim some kind of philosophical high-ground, and see atheists as “just as dogmatic as theists”. Some agnostics never really contemplate what they actually mean when they say they’re agnostic and what the implications are.

The word agnostic (Greek: ἀ- a-, without + γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge), is about the issue of knowledge. In case of god it would be the answer to the question “Do you know if god exists?” But this actually means that most atheists are actually agnostics - since the broader definition of atheism is “the lack of belief in god”, and most atheists don’t claim that they know god doesn’t exist, they just don’t believe he does.

And this is the problem with the popular definition of agnosticism as a “middle” position. Agnosticism, atheism and theism are answers to different questions. While atheism and theism describe our belief, agnosticism (and gnosticism) describe what we know. And if we go by the “lack of belief in god” definition of atheism, all agnostics are actually atheists - they don’t believe god exists (again, this is about belief, not knowledge), since they are supposedly undecided on the question.

And what am I? I’m an agnostic atheist. I don’t know if god exists, but I don’t believe he does.