If you want to get technical, gnositicism is a knowledge claim, where as theism is a belief claim. Agnostic thus means without knowledge, where as atheism means without belief.

In practice however they mean the exact same thing. As everyone I’ve ever met who calls themself agnostic isn’t convinced there is a god, and are thus by definition atheists.

Absolutely there’s a difference and needs to be. For some agnosticism is a stepping stone to atheism.. for some not. I am positive there are no gods past, present or future. There was a time about 20 years ago when I wondered “what if” and I referred to myself as agnostic at that time.

I am agnostic because I do not care if there is a god or gods. It does not affect me.

But I also take my agnosticism as an advantage in that I can believe what I want, when I want. I like the freedom to believe in wood nymphs and water sprites on a visit to a forest; to worship the sun goddess; to thank the mouse goddess when I find that bad runaway mouse; to believe SriSri Ravi Shankar feels me at the tip of a hair from his head; that someone or something listens to my thoughts; that it might be possible to affect things by saying "oh please oh please" in my head; that prayer can help by adding to the positivity in this world; that my pets are angels in furry coats lent to me by God and which go Over the Rainbow Bridge.

None of these things do I actively believe often. But I won't argue with you if you tell me they are true for you.

They are certainly two different things. One can be agnostic without being atheist. You can be an agnostic theist.

It's a question of surety. I can't say with 100 percent certainty there is no God, so I am an agnostic atheist. A gnostic atheist would believe beyond all doubt there was not.

I think there is a definite distinction, for me personally. I choose 'Agnostic', because - while I don't think the existence of God can be proven, I don't think it can be totally 'disproven' either. To me, and I mean no disrespect, the complete 'atheist' feels their knowledge of the universe is complete, so nothing can come along to make them question their disbelief. And I don't personally think that we will ever know enough about the nature of existence to make that a 'provable' fact. We don't even know the questions to really ask to begin to truly understand.

'Here's my two cents; I usually get 1.99 cents change '

Merriam Webster definition
Agnostic:: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
Atheist: : a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods : one who subscribes to or advocates atheism

I don't think it's a "ploy". Unbelievers are often as fuzzy on the distinction as believers, although for rather different reasons.

Agnosticism is one's knowledge position ... atheism is one's belief position. They influence each other, but can vary independently.

Agnosticism as it was conceived by Huxley is not just personally being unsure about the existence of gods; it is the position that this is not knowable at all, at least not for a supernatural type of deity. If you are that sort of agnostic then it's hard not to be an atheist (one who doesn't see any reason to believe in any gods) because belief is based on knowledge, and if you can't have knowledge of the existence of gods, you can't form a belief one way or the other, either.

Comes down to proof, I suppose. Either could have no belief in deity, or deities, unless or until given absolute proof. And as far as that goes, it doesn't appear to have come yet. Personally, I have no gods, I'm quite certain of that; doesn't mean there's not one, or several out there, but I'm not going to live my life in service of any of them, or with the notion it/they have any bearing on how I conduct my life.

Here is the crux of the problem. Saying there is NO god as a definitive requires an omniscient awareness of cosmology we can't have. So of course the theist prefers that simplistic assertion because failing to be omniscient we cannot demonstrate it.

If we say agnostic, they will pretend we know we just don't want to say it... so I prefer to say I am atheist because i do not see convincing evidence historical or otherwise that convinces me any religious proposition is not an extension of its originating culture. So I have a provisional belief that there are not gods that CAN be swayed, but has yet to be.

They answer different questions. Gnosticism is about knowledge and does not even necessarily relate to anything about god(s). Theism is an affirmative answer to the question, “Do you believe in God?” If you can’t answer that question with a YES, you are an atheist.
But getting to the other part of your question, I do feel like theists like to use that dialogue to distract from the actual conversation. The actual conversation I always try to have is finding out what a theist believes and then trying to figure out why. Unfortunately, no theist has even come close to being convincing on that second part.

To me a person is an Agnostic when he / she is bot sure God doesn't exist....and an Atheist is the one who says "God doesn't exist".

I definitely think they are different. However, just because I am 100% sure that there is no god in this life/reality, does not mean that I am sure that there is no god in an afterlife or if something comes after this life. So I have had people label me as an agnostic, but I identify as an Athiest. But because I don’t totally reject everything, they claimed that I can’t be athiest. If you look at the definitions, I’m kind of both.

Agnosticism and atheism are different things, so yes - there's a need to differentiate between them.

The two ideas are, in fact, different. An agnostic just does not know whether the gods exist or no, while an atheist emphatically denies their existence. So, it is a dialogue between "I really don’t know" and "Bull shit, there is no f. god"

I’ve been having a similar discussion with my Buddhist group, and some of them have proved quite unshakeable in their agnosticism, so I guess the division serves a purpose.