The difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic is subtle, and generally relates to a difference in philosophy, not aim. Agnostics and atheists share the same aims, to a degree, and the same creed of progress by proper application of rationalistic principles.
The only real difference is this: whereas an atheist is positive that no god exists, nor has at any time, an agnostic prefers to leave the question open.
An agnostic will also note that history reveals no Divine Guidance or Plan. On the contrary, what we learn from history is the inexorable succession of effect after cause, of consequence after choice.
On the matter of whether or not a god (or gods) exist, the agnostic prefers to remain silent. It can be shown that the Judeo-Christian god has a mundane history, a biography if you will. In general, humankind creates gods and devils in their own image. This, however, still does not preclude the existence of a silent Deity, or of an unconscious force that works to create order from chaos. These are questions that cannot, as yet, be answered.
The agnostic simply prefers not to take a stand until all the evidence is in, something which may not happen for a very long time, and something which, in fact, may not happen at all.
On the matter of the human soul, the agnostic generally agrees with the atheist that no such thing exists. The marriage of modern neuroscience with cognitive psychology has revealed that the incorporate entity, which we call "mind", can be explained as the workings of an incredibly complex organ, the human brain. This organ contains hundreds of billions of neurons, with literally thousands of billions of connections between them. This incredible mass of wiring gives rise to consciousness. At the end of the day, everything that makes us human, our mind, our emotions, our judgment, our perception of reality, all are generated by the conscious organ that each of us carries in our heads.
Both the atheist and the agnostic are of the opinion that ethics and morality derive from humanity, not divinity.
All systems of ethics can be viewed as necessary attempts to regulate human interaction.
Finally, atheists and agnostics are usually grouped together under the label "freethinkers". This group, which includes other viewpoints such as Secular Humanism and Rationalism, is united by a number of common aims and creeds, chief among them the notion that all truth must be derived from, and tested by, the principles of rationality.
Edited from:
What is an Agnostic?
Address:http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/agnostic.shtml Changed:2:03 PM on Sunday, December 19, 2004
Yeah.... what he said.
An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven, for example, but rather holds that one cannot know for certain if they exist or not. The term agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning “without, not,” as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word gnosis, “knowledge,” which was used by early Christian writers to mean “higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things”; hence, Gnostic referred to those with such knowledge. In coining the term agnostic, Huxley was considering as “Gnostics” a group of his fellow intellectuals—“ists,” as he called them—who had eagerly embraced various doctrines or theories that explained the world to their satisfaction. Because he was a “man without a rag of a label to cover himself with,” Huxley coined the term agnostic for himself, its first published use being in 1870.
--American Heritage Dictionary