“believe in wi-fi”
If you don’t believe wi-fi exists, you’d be a fool.
i don’t believe in wifi, just like i don’t believe in trees. i know they’re there. that requires no belief.

The belief would be that your senses aren’t being actively deceived. Also, that you’re not a Boltzmann brain hallucinating in the void.

I personally believe all the axioms of science apply. It’s still fun to poke at them.

the atheist says “i will not believe”. the agnostic says “i can not believe”. one is as dogmatic as the beliefs they purport to refute, the other lacks the capacity for dogma, as belief for them is simply not possible.

I’m willing to accept Atheism, ‘I do not believe in God’, as somewhat dogmatic, but as others have said, it’s the null hypothesis and they have Occam’s razor going for them. Pragmatically it is a useful stance in light of the societal harm religion does.

I am however unwilling to conflate Agnosticism with ‘I can not believe’, always been “I’m waiting for evidence one way or the other” to me, so perhaps the more scientific point of view.

to me, those last two statements are pretty close in the grand scheme of things. it was allegorical anyway, since we weren’t really talking about god.

if there is no proof one way or the other, the pragmatic stance is to be neutral. if one side is more theoretically sound, the pragmatic stance is to assume that’s the correct side while still being open to the other. only when there’s proof of one side can you dismuss the other. none of those steps require “belief”, i.e. unfounded assumptions.

as an aside, personally i feel like religion is one of those issues where there is proof.

No, the pragmatic stance is to pick the stance that is more helpful and useful. That may or may not be neutral.

It’s not 3 points, but 4.

Atheist==>Theist Agnostic==>gnostic

There are agnostic atheists and agnostic theists.