A great agnostic or atheist?

I recommend the Point of Inquiry podcasts available via www.pointofinquiry.org or subscription on ITunes. The podcast for April 11, 2008 featured an interview with Tom Flynn, from the Center for Inquiry and author of The Trouble With Christmas, talking about the most famous American no one ever heard of, Robert Green Ingersoll.

A curious comment was made about atheism vs agnosticism. (Ingersoll was a self-titled "agnostic".) Atheism is all about the question "Is there a God?" Agnosticism is about "How do we know what we know?" Therefore, the two concepts can be complimentary. One could be an agnostic and atheist by saying "I think there is no God (atheism) but I can not really know for sure (agnosticism)". That would be me.

I've never come across the concept colored in quite this way before. I've encountered the version that calls agnosticism as atheist-light, or atheism without a backbone. Mostly, it seems that agnosticism can be successfully used to bypass the trigger reaction that comes with the atheist label. I'm a big fan of Thomas Huxley, who coined the word agnostic in the modern sense, so I will call myself agnostic. I wonder if I misunderstand the proper use. Well, the arguments will continue. Check out these links for more information.

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/guide13.html (Huxley on agnosticism)
http://www.secularhumanism.org/ingersoll/
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/ (Complete works of Ingersoll)