Richard Dawkins: So compassionate to help pastors-turned-atheist with the fallout of their decision including:

• Wrestling with intellectual, ethical, philosophical and theological issues
• Coping with cognitive dissonance
• Addressing feelings of being stuck and fearing the future
• Looking for new careers
• Telling their families
• Sharing useful resources
• Living as a nonbeliever with religious spouses and family
• Using humor to soften the pain
• Finding a way out of the ministry
• Adjusting to life after the ministry

Clergy Project.

When asked if agnostics are atheists, Bertrand Russell answered,

“No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God, the atheist that we can know there is not. The agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial.”1

He does concede that certain agnostics who think the existence of God so improbable as to not be worth considering are not far removed from atheism.

At any rate, I recently discovered that not every atheist allows for the category of agnostic.

1 Interview in Look magazine, November 3, 1953

Refining an Atheist Identity | Ignostic Atheist.