<i>My best friend is a devout atheist and he likes to quote dawkins and hitchens and other high priests of his religion. I use these terms purposefully. He&#x27;s every bit as fervent as any hell fire and brimstone Baptist.</i><p>Yeah, I know what you mean. I am an atheist, but not what I call a &quot;militant atheist&quot;, or a &quot;Dawkins &#x2F; Hitchens acolyte&quot;.   I believe (or dis-believe) what I believe, but I&#x27;m not worried about getting in other people&#x27;s faces and contesting things with them.  The only time I <i>care</i> what other people believe is when you get into situations where people try to use the hammer that is government, to force their religious beliefs on people who don&#x27;t share those beliefs.<p><i>I consider myself to be an agnostic at the moment mostly due to a lack of options. I don&#x27;t consider it to be a &quot;weasel term&quot;.</i><p>Yeah, I could have worded that better. I&#x27;d say it was a &quot;weasel term&quot; for <i>me</i> to call myself agnostic, as I really was an atheist all along.  I just wasn&#x27;t quite confident enough to really state it firmly, and also I think I thought that saying &quot;agnostic&quot; instead of &quot;atheist&quot; was less likely to provoke conflict (again, living in the Bible Belt, with lots of friends and family who are very religious).<p>I have nothing against the term agnostic in general, I just realized I was using it to avoid the issue.