You may have the academic definition of the word right, Bill; but I'm not so sure that what you describe is the reality of it. It seems to me, that a good number of people who call themselves atheists, go well beyond simply not having a belief in God - they actively deny that God exists. And in this age of Internet Infallibility, they're avid crusaders against those who dare to profess any sort of belief in a deity. We have some of those crusaders right here at Mudcat. These infallible atheists are every bit as rigid and intolerant, as are the religious fundamentalists they oppose.

The ones you describe as saying, "you haven't convinced me, and I will not be convinced without a different kind of evidence than you offer." - those are the ones I think of as agnostic.

-Joe-