You have an different understanding of what atheism is. To me, atheism can be divided into 'soft' atheism and 'hard' atheism, which I know quite a simplification. 'Soft' atheism is a disbelief that god exists, which can be arrived from a view that the existence of deity is unknowable...but unlikely, versus 'hard' atheism is a belief that god doesn't exist. I would say that the former is an agnostic atheist and the latter is not. I don't see how this can be construed as 'undecided'. The difference between a baby being agnostic an adult being agnostic is that a baby doesn't have the capacity to give the issue a thought and follow that to a conclusion, so it's as much an argument as saying that rocks are agnostic :/. I don't think the debate on the issue of death penalty is a good comparison because everything you need to know in order to make an informed decision on where to stand on the issue is a lot more comprehensible than the issue of the existence of god. I wouldn't say what I did if I hadn't given it a reasonable amount of thought and came to the conclusion that I did it makes sense as far as my ability to deduce allows me to.
I will try to explain what I am trying to say, but bear with me. I am not the best at this. Please let me know if I need to clarify or if I have misinterpreted. There are a lot of silly words for us to go through.
I acknowledge the difference between your "soft" and "hard" atheism. To me, your descriptions of these sound like agnostic atheism (soft) and gnostic atheism (hard).
Agnostic atheism says there is probably no god, but we don't know for sure.
Gnostic atheism states that there definitely is no god, and we know for sure. My baby example is not meant to show that these beliefs require a certain level of cognition. Rather, think of a person who grows up not knowing the concept of a god. Or you can even think of someone today who has never been religious or spiritual. They may never even think about the concept of god, but they do not actively believe in one. This is
implicit atheism because these people do not actively state or even think that they do not believe in a god. In contrast, people who you see on the Internet that
actively talk about their atheism are
explicit atheists. They have given thought to the matter and can take an active position on the matter. (People who express explicit atheism can either be agnostic or gnostic.) There is a bit of a debate on whether or not a person who defines as "agnostic" can actually have a truly neutral stance or if they are actually just implicit atheists. IMO, there
can be a truly neutral state. The difference between implicit atheism and "true agnosticism" is that implicit atheism requires no thought on the matter while "true agnosticism" does.
If you are unsatisfied with my death penalty example, I will attempt to create another example.
Let's pretend there is a plot of land somewhere. Bob and Joe begin talking about the plot of land, but they have never seen it. Bob believes there to be a house on the plot. He shows Joe some papers he has found of blueprints for a house on that very plot of land. Joe looks at Bob's blueprint, but he disagrees. The blueprint is quite old--it's possible that the house may have never been built, the house might have been knocked down by now, or it may even be misinterpreted to be for a different plot. Bob is the "theist"--he believes the house exist. Joe is the "atheist"--he does not believe the house exist. Now along comes Fred. Fred listens to both Bob and Joe's arguments, but he cannot decide who is right. You could technically call him an implicit atheist, but I would argue that because he has put thought into the matter without being able to reach a conclusion, he is actually simply "agnostic."
As you see, the concept is much simpler here. Is there a house? Yes or no.
Dawkins also seems to believe there is a truly neutral position, but I do not know what he calls it. There is only a
short Wikipedia article on it, unfortunately. I wish there were more.
It's just that I've almost never witnessed this so-called "transitional state" for real in my entire life. But believers or politically correct thinkers often prefer to imagine Agnosticism is rather common. Guess why!
I am an atheist and have been for some time now. This doesn't mean that there wasn't a time in my life where I truly
had no idea what I thought of either side. From my experience with teh Internets, this is a fairly common, yet often short lived state.