The rise of "new atheism" produced a counter-offensive in the rise of "new theism", though from a philosophical perspective neither was particularly new. Now, we hail the arrival of "new agnosticism", those who wish to avoid 'the certitudes of both theism and atheism'. Ron Rosenbaum argues that atheism is a kind of theism ; both are faith-based perspectives, he says. Agnosticism and atheism appear to be philosophically distinct positions, though they are intellectual neighbours in a semi-detached house rather than occupying separate estates. They are psychologically distinct too: part of the difference between atheists and agnostics may simply be that they are different kinds of personality types. The same may also be true of liberal and conservative religious believers.

How would you distinguish between atheists and agnostics? Are agnostics merely weak-tea atheists or is there a more substantial difference between these positions?

Picture: Thomas Huxley, the originator of the term "agnostic". This is how he describes the coining of that neologism: 'When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis," -- had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.'