Originally posted by Agerg
Firstly I realise that many of you have somewhat refined notions about what sort of person is a [insert type of person], so I ask more what is your "shot from the hip" response to the terms that will follow (or let's say what *would* have been your "shot from the hip" prior to the insight you may now have?)

1) atheist
2) agnostic
3) theist

mine ...[text shortened]... ular god, represented accurately by a particular holy book, all other holy books are false.

Intuitively -

Atheist = strong atheist - convinced there are no gods.

Agnostic = has no idea whether there are gods.

Theist = religious

Originally posted by Agerg
Is it? whether or not atheism satisfies the criterion(s) for being a (or for having the qualities of a) religion under this given definition (I'm not seeing how), I'm not an etymologist so I reference the first main paragraph in the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion) for "religion":

Religion (from Latin religio, "reverence for t on on what this word minimally entails I'm still troubled as to how it fits atheism

We disagree on the matter of truth, but I find no reason to deny the warmth of commonality otherwise.

Originally posted by Agerg
It is a conjecture of mine that there is in many cases, a (biased) trinary way of thinking about ones position towards the existence of gods
1) One believes 100% that there exists no god or gods
2) One believes there may or may not be a god, equal probability either way
3) One is either 100% sure or highly confident there is a god, (though not necessarily 100% sure (hence having faith))
No other positions being allowed!

I think that a large proportion of people are agnostic. Many of the people I know who call themselves Christian, do not act as if they are fully convinced of the matter, and quite a number of them admit to being 'just in case' Christians ie they are leaning towards atheism but wont go as far as saying so just in case the Christians have it right.
There are also people who believe there is a God, but are not too sure who /what he is. They say things like "all religions have a bit of the truth, but none of them is entirely correct."

What 'other positions' were you considering?