Where does he stand?

Richard Dawkins' statement that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist seems to have surprised a lot of people.  So just what is the difference?  Both words come from the Greek a- being a negative prefix, theos meaning god, and gnossis meaning knowledge.  So an atheist is one who maintains that there is no God, whereas an agnostic is one who does not know (and maybe doesn't care).  Of course, as there can never be any absolute proof of the existence or non-existence of God, atheism is as much a matter of faith (belief without proof) as the contrary stance that He does exist.  And as a scientist, by definition, is one who arrives at conclusions by the gathering and examination of facts, it is difficult to see how any scientist true to his trade, could be an atheist.  Given that, as he himself said, Dawkins cannot be absolutely certain that God does not exist (just sure on a scale of  6.9 out of 7) then he has to be agnostic.