It's a matter of definition, really. Does god exist ?
The theist says "yes", the atheist says "no", and the agnostic says "with the information available, I can't know for sure"
lrn2 informal language. As a rule, people don't say things like "I think
x is overwhelmingly likely, but there remains a possibility that not
x". They say "
x is true".* Just think about how unnatural "with the information available, I can't know for sure" sounds. Does anyone speak like that? Would you say "I'm planning to go shopping today, but there remains a possibility that I might be killed, so I can't be sure"? No, at least I hope not. Most people would say "I'm going shopping today". When an atheist says "God doesn't exist", he means "I consider the possibility of the existence of a god to be so remote that it might as well be zero, and will live my life as if no god existed". The second sentence is very unnatural-sounding and very long winded, so the first phrase is used in its place. Everyone, with the exception of a small minority of pedants, knows what he means. People need to learn that in normal conversation, remote possibilities are usually ignored unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. The remote possibility can be safely ignored because most people will understand that the person speaking knows that the remote possibility exists. The remote possibility is ignored since it's impractical to always take into account all remote possibilities.
This is why I compare your type of agnostic to the Pyrrhonian sceptic. Pyrrho was so obsessed with the fact that he couldn't know anything for certain that he couldn't live his life. He couldn't be certain that he needed to eat to survive. He couldn't be certain that he wouldn't die if he walked off a cliff. Legend has it that he needed to be looked after by others because his scepticism was so debilitating. Living a normal life and having a normal conversation requires assuming things are certain when they are actually just
nearly certain. For some reason, there are a group of people who live normally, but apply this kind of debilitating scepticism when it comes to questions about the existence of a god. Perhaps they know that they wouldn't be able to live or communicate normally if they approached every question in life in the same way they approach the question of whether God exists.
this definition in mind (the right one, AFAIK)
This isn't the definition that any atheist uses. The only people who use this definition are people making strawman arguments.
And you'd be nice not to call me a troll when I'm clearly not.
When you define an atheist as someone who claims 100% certainty, calling you a troll is an act of kindness.
*This brings up another pet peeve of mine, which isn't related to this thread. Very often, people will say "
x is better than
y" about something that is a matter of opinion. And very often, some autist will respond to this by saying "that's just a matter of opinion!
x can't be objectively better than
y!", as if the first person was unaware of this. The second person thinks he is very clever but is, of course, an idiot. He has apparently not noticed the fact that saying "in my opinion" before stating an opinion is very unnatural and makes one sound as if one lacks the courage of one's convictions and is apologising for having any opinion at all. He has failed to realise that where something is obviously a matter of opinion, normal people use phrases like "
x is better than
y" because, in the context, it is understood that they are referring to their opinion. Only someone with very poor knowledge of human communication would assume that people saying things like this actually thought that their opinion was an objective fact.
In the same way, when someone says "God doesn't exist", I understand them as meaning that they deem the existence of God to be very unlikely. In the context, it's safe to assume that this is what the person actually means. The chances that the person is discounting a remote possibility for the purposes of practicality are far greater than the chances that he is claiming to be 100% certain.