I am both, and I can’t see a contradiction that statement. When I say I am both atheist and agnostic then that is my prerogative, as I have made that statement in the full knowledge of the meaning of both words. What interests me is why you think they cannot be “intertwined”, as from my understanding the two positions are not mutually exclusive.

I posted this bit about muffins before, but this seems like a good time to bring it out again. And muffins are fun.

Suppose for a minute, and for the sake of argument only, that there is a god, and an afterlife, including heaven and a hell; and that the god chooses whether people go to heaven, or if some go to hell, in fact the whole theist deal. Not only that, but the criterion on which the god makes the choice is based on the type of muffins they eat. ( Note: “eat” not prefer, this is not about free will or anything like that.) People who eat lemon muffins go to heaven and people who eat chocolate muffins go to hell, with limbo for those who don't eat muffins at all, naturally.

Would that make a difference to your life ? Would you give up your chocolate muffins for an eternity of joy, and all the lemon buns after death you could ever eat ? Perhaps you would. But there is one vital thing that I forgot to mention about this god, which is that; this particular god, does not tell you about the muffins, or how they affect your afterlife, in fact it keeps the whole thing a big secret just to itself, so that you have no way of knowing which muffins you have to eat.

Then in that case, of course, you could not make the appropriate changes to your life, or save your soul anyway. In fact muffins, the gods preferences and even that god, would not impact on your life at all.

The point is this. That a gods, souls, the afterlife etc. have no effect on anything, unless that god, or someone who knows, tells you about it, and you therefore have some knowledge of god's cake prejudices. Making this the big difference between religion, which pretends to offer knowledge of god the afterlife etc., and none belief which does not. Which is why the difference between atheists, humanists, agnostics and even deists, is so small and unimportant by comparison, because none claim any knowledge of gods preferences, and it is the pretense of fake knowledge, and of god given authority, which makes the big difference. Compared with that the differences between atheist and agnostic, even deist, are trivial to the point of vanishing.

atheist do not believe that people exist, agnostic does not know people exist. atheist agnostic does not believe they know if people exist.

I'm an agnatheist. See, you can put them together.

Splitting hairs. Consumed by lack of definition.