Letters to the Editor
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Agnostic is generally just a polite word for atheist
Richard Dawkins' chapter about agnosticism was probably one of the best in The God Delusion.
Dawkins' basic point was that, sure, we're all agnostics to some degree inasmuch as no one can definitively prove that there is no God. But that doesn't mean that the chances of there being or not being a God are equal.
I actually think the question of the non-existence of God is meaningless. I can say that the Christian God is highly, highly implausible. Or that the existence of Allah defies credulity. By the process of elimination, I can discern that all the dieties that have been proposed to date are hard to give creedence to. But who's to say that just because all the Gods mankind has hitherto known are obviously manufactured that there isn't some God completely unknown to man? It's narcissistic to think that if God exists, we would necessarily have to know something about him.
But the fact is, if you're an agnostic, you're probably not going to participate in any of the rituals or sacraments of the existing religions, which means for all practical purposes, you're an atheist. God is not going to give you all the goodies he has reserved for the faithful simply because you put an open-minded asterisk next to your unbelief.