From the Free Online Dictionary of Unusual and Weird Words:

deism — belief in God but rejection of religion

I think that’s how most people define “agnostic” these days.

Yeah...most people would.

One the plus side the fouders of this country were Deists.

Yup. Or, rather, many of them were. It was kind of the In Thing with the Enlightenment Crowd.

According to this page, Websters in 1941 defined Deist as: "One who believes in the existence of a God or supreme being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason." Which isn't all that bad a proposition, IMO (even if the page tends to be a bit smug about it all).

History of deism.

http://www.deism.org/historyofdeism.htm

This makes sense; other cultures have a similar seperation, i.e. Dao-jiao (Taoism as a religion) and Dao-jia (Taoism as a philosophy) in Chinese culture.

Actually, agnostics don't take a position on the matter either way. Dictionary:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=agnostic&x=0&y=0

Using myself as an example, I'm an agnostic for reasons of epistemological honesty: I see no reason for a deity or deities to exist, and certainly most of the forms of the divine that people claim are laughable based on evidence and logic, but... You can't prove a negative, so I stay open on the question. I'd consider it an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, though.

Just putting in my $.02,
- Brad