I make the claim with considerably more certainty than I make claims like “Aliens are not amongst us.” and “9/11 was not an inside job.”

Perhaps the better way to characterize the difference is to say that athiests have a model of the world utterly lacking in such supernaturalism. It isn't simply that we 'do not believe'. Rather, I think athiests would claim to have a reasonably coherent mental model for how the world works, and a set of tools and processes for learning more about it.

We're sorry, but your 'god talk' is superflous to that model. Except as childish conversations along the lines of Santa Claus, unicorns, and juju-zombies. Rather than say 'do you believe?, it might be more helpful to ask 'do you accept as reasonable?'.

It's generally an article of faith for atheists just like it's an article of faith for theists. Neither side has proof.

The argument that the word 'agnostic' is meaningless is ridiculous. People use it all the time and not just to be polite. They use it to describes themselves as someone who doesn't know, doesn't have faith in either atheism or theism, etc.

I make the claim with considerably more certainty than I make claims like “Aliens are not amongst us.” and “9/11 was not an inside job.”

Perhaps the better way to characterize the difference is to say that athiests have a model of the world utterly lacking in such supernaturalism. It isn't simply that we 'do not believe'. Rather, I think athiests would claim to have a reasonably coherent mental model for how the world works, and a set of tools and processes for learning more about it.

We're sorry, but your 'god talk' is superflous to that model. Except as childish conversations along the lines of Santa Claus, unicorns, and juju-zombies. Rather than say 'do you believe?, it might be more helpful to ask 'do you accept as reasonable?'.

It's generally an article of faith for atheists just like it's an article of faith for theists. Neither side has proof.

The argument that the word 'agnostic' is meaningless is ridiculous. People use it all the time and not just to be polite. They use it to describes themselves as someone who doesn't know, doesn't have faith in either atheism or theism, etc.

I don't think I've ever met an atheist who claims the latter, and I've known a lot of atheists.

Those who say I really don't know shouldn't label themselves atheists. They should label themselves agnostics. Because there are those who do claim certainty or near certainty and they identify themselves as atheists. When I hear 'atheist' (and this is from a wide variety of experience), I take that to mean 'I believe god does not exist'.

Which is to say, I agree that in practice there's no significant difference between atheists and agnostics. The latter are functional atheists who are trying to sound polite.

I don't know about that. There are all sorts of reasonable arguments. Pascal's wager, humans needing a god, etc.

Agnostics say they don't know, it's not possible to know, or they don't know with enough certainty.

Claiming 100% certainty is a bit ridiculous. Just look at quantum mechanics…those physicists who claimed 100% certainty about their scientific world-view probably felt a bit silly once quantum mechanics started getting fleshed out.