There's a lot of misinformation about atheism flying around these parts. This essay certainly doesn't represent the beliefs of all atheists (since atheism is not a religion and lacks a central text or creed), but it's an interesting read. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/16/jillette.atheist.libertarian/index.html
He doesn't even know what an atheist is, but he's certainly not one. He's an agnostic. Or has minimal powers of reasoning. He should probably follow Teller's lead and not speak aloud. Here's a layman's explanation of atheism, dumbed down for the limited mental acuities of people who hide their head in the sand. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/there-is-no-god-and-you-k_b_8459.html
Nope. While the word "agnostic" has come to mean "refraining from making a decision about god" in terms of popular understanding, that's not at all the correct definition according to Thomas Huxley, who coined the term: Very simply (in "dumbed down" terms), "agnosticism" is an admission that we don't know everything and a means of pruning gut feelings and traditional beliefs from provable facts. Anyone who agrees that humans are not omniscient is, in a sense, an agnostic. Atheism, on the other hand, simply means the absence of a belief in god, and is not AT ALL incompatible with agnosticism. In fact, the two go together like peas and carrots.
Penn believes that the gods of human tradition are just as unlikely to exist as Sam Harris believes they are. He's an atheist. He was answering 'i don't know' to the question how did we get here. It is possible to be both an atheist and an agnostic. MOST atheists are agnostics.
