Orkin... It would seem that your "academic sources" arn't aligned with the rest of the world.

Wiki: Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown or unknowable.

Agnosticism has nothing to do with belief or lack there of. Its simply a statement about wheter we can know if there is a god/several gods or not.

Anyone who isn't theistic is atheistic. If theism is believing there is a god, atheism is a lack of a belief in a god. Atheism includes people who have never heard or thought about gods, because they quite naturally can't believe in a entity or concept they have never heard of or thought about. Atheism includes many stances on the supernatural, ranging from "I know for a fact that there is no god", to "god?" or "we will never know if there is a god or not".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/...Theological_positions.png

Most atheists are agnostic atheists (e.g. "I don't know if there are gods or not, and I don't follow any faith"). Many theists are agnostic too (e.g. "I don't know if god exists, but I'm considering myself christian to not risk winding up in hell").

You're right in one thing though; "atheism is not a belief it's the absence of belief" is a false statement, since just like "atheism is a positive statement of disbelief" it doesn't encompass all the possible stances an atheist may take.