re: Moral and ethical values....
I'm aware of the distinction between "agnostic" and "atheist" but I tend to use the words interchangeably. After all, there is no way to know, and an all-powerful god is really no more incomprehensible or unbelievable than a big bang and an inflationary cosmology. The only difference in the latter is that there is some evidence, but even that does not help us with the problem of original cause.
I simply prefer "atheist" because it seems like less of a cop-out.