Agnostics...
I am an agnostic. For some reason on this site saying that I am one means I'm a spineless fence sitter with a lack of danglies who should read more and make a choice. To the vocal minority who hold this opinion I would like to say the following:

Agnosticism is not sitting on the fence. It's saying that you don't have the arrogance or blinkered mindset to zealously follow a single faith or scientific argument's tenets to the extreme, without sound reason to do so.

I think evolution happens, and that intelligent design in its current form is a sack of idiocy tied with a little ribbon of religious desperation. However this doesn't mean there isn't a sky pixie/beard who made all this true. Science doesn't know what actually caused the Big Bang so why is a being of immesurable power which kicked our reality off for fun/boredom/love/as a by product of a fight with a pirate frog of epic size/by doing a massive shit any more outlandish an opinion than "well... it just happened through no actual cause thus negating most of physics and therefore my entire justification for calling those religious types cunts"? If someone comes along with some proof of what happened to create that superdense matter ball which created us then great, I'll assimilate the new data into my viewpoint. (nobody say 'bang crunch' please, there's still a causeless effect to explian away)

I don't sit on my fence and tell everyone I respect their viewpoints like some sort of annoying zen type. I rubbish homeopaths, despise those who use religion as justification for any evil act and really, really hate atheists who don't take a little time to understand what it is people like me believe before going off on one. The gross presumption of many atheists regarding all other religious and scientific viewpoints I find far more nauseating than someone who really feels the presence of their own personal deity. Plus most god loving types see me as an open mind, rather than a twat.

Before you launch a tirade at agnostics in general, ask what they ACTUALLY believe rather than what you've predetermined through ignorance.
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 13:32, 24 replies)

Minor detail from a scientist
By definition, the laws of physics are rooted in this universe and as such before the universe existed (not that that statement makes any sense - there was no time before the universe) there were no physical laws to obey.
( MatJ LOOK, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 13:44, closed)

fair point
I'm a squishy scientist (biology/psychology) so physics really isn't my strong suit...

Related but not actually relevant:

Isn't our entire universe dependent on all the forces we know of being exactly how they are? ie if any one force was stronger/weaker then life probably wouldn't be here?
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 13:58, closed)

You could make the case that if the forces were different life wouldn't have arisen
It's a tautology, like Douglas Adams pointed out - whatever happens, happens. If you subscribe to the "many worlds" hypothesis, you might argue that there are billions of universes where the forces were slightly different, and they don't contain life.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 14:01, closed)

Alternate Universes
Now we're getting into the lovely world of string theory with alternate/splitting dimensions. :)
(Magus Zeal reloading since, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 18:26, closed)

You don't really need string theory for that.

(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 20:17, closed)

Not necessarily
There is some evidence that the laws may be subtly different in distant reaches of space, and also that they aren't constant.

I heard a nice theory once that if the entire quantum state of the universe is able to tunnel from state to state (electrons can do it, on a much smaller scale) then the laws of physics will shift by immesurably small bits until they are in a ratio that would co-incidentally allow life to arise, at which point it would, and be surprised that it had done so.
( MatJ LOOK, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 23:16, closed)

Surely they ARE the universe
rather than just being a part of them?
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 20:17, closed)

In "The God Delusion"
Even Richard Dawkins describes himself as an agnostic. Just one for whom the evidence of a deity's existence is so thin as to be unconvincing.

He's said himself that if anyone can come up with any (testable, verifiable, falsifiable) evidence for a deity, he'd happily become a believer. He's not Satan, he's Doubting Thomas (only without the conveniently-wounded Messiah to poke around in).

I'd say most "atheists" were in this camp, in truth.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 13:50, closed)

I actually like Mr (Dr?) Dawkins. He encourages people to question their belief. It's those who take things he said and wave them around who annoy me. I see striking echoes of a muslim who's not actually read the Quaran using it to justify whatever he's doing. It's also really ironic that the Quaran actually promotes questioning of every aspect of faith...
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 14:02, closed)

Prof

( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 14:18, closed)

This
He himself said, on the Bill Maher show, that he would rank a 6.9 on a scale of 1-7 for atheism. He said that no one should rightly be a 7, and yes, I'd say almost all the atheists I know (including myself) fall into this category.
(Magus Zeal reloading since, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 18:28, closed)

Since it's impossible to state with absolute certainty that there is or isn't a god
Agnosticism is the default position for everyone. Most "atheists" are just a bit higher on the agnostic scale than you are. Point this out to them next time they give you grief.

Then grow a pair of balls and join them :)
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 13:55, closed)

In person it's really not an issue. If someone has the wrong idea about my faith structure, I'm eloquent enough to put my point across and big enough to pin them to the deck while I explain if needs be... it's the knee-jerk types on here who take a Daily Mail mindset to the most important of questions.
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:17, closed)

I shouldn't worry about that
there's no point in arguing with someone with a closed mind. I self-identify as "atheist" but I''ll admit that's just shorthand for "extremely unconvinced agnostic" - after all, I'm just as agnostic about Thor and Zeus as I am about Jesus and the rest of his troublesome family...and even people who believe in those are usually agnostic about Amun-Ra or Woden. Everyone's an agnostic when it comes down to it, we just go one god further than believers.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:24, closed)

Thing is, I see atheism as basically having faith that there is no deity, be it a classical god or any sentient creative force on any scale. An atheist by definition believes in the absence of theism. An agnostic is a fully different animal, basically saying "I don't know, yet" and within that framework you have people who lean one way or another. Many people seem to confuse the two or use them interchangeably. They are not synonyms.

A [christian] [insert most other religions here instead] is a committed atheist with the sole exception of his specific God with a capital G. Anyone who really follows what their book tells them will point out that God said he's the only one so that's their proof. Aothertheism, if you will!
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:36, closed)

I don't see atheism like that - I'm essentially agnostic in that I don't know whether there is a God or not
but in my opinion it's far more likely that there isn't. Extraordinary claims (like a god) require extraordinary proof, and I've not seen or heard anything that would convince me that they might be true. I can't say for sure that there isn't a god but at the same time I'm not going to believe in one "just in case". If you read Dawkins, he posits a scale with devout believer at 1 and atheist at 7, then self-identifies as a 6.9 - there may be a god, but it's extremely unlikely. I'd agree with that.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:41, closed)

I don't like the scale... I see it more like a starfish in an infinite number of dimensions. All the legs represent a different belief structure and the pointy end bits are the fundamentalists. The central organs are in a seperate, non infinitely diverse state, and that's agnosticism. Once you leave the squishy middle you're not an agnostic, you're a believer who questions their faith, whatever that faith is. The nearer to a leg end, the less questions you accept as valid and the less you really ask. An agnostic will happily slice off legs right left and centre (or interdimensional variations thereof) but never run out of new ones to consider. Someone with faith will quickly reach a balanced state with new legs popping into view only occasionally.

Quantum starfish should be a poster...

I typed this, realised it total bollocks, read it again and laughed and am now posting it.
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:54, closed)

I'd buy a poster
:)
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 16:35, closed)

Great! Now all I need is someone with image editing skills and too much free time...
Fuck knows where I could find anyone like that.
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 16:44, closed)

Fixed.
Agnosticism is not sitting on the fence. It's saying that you don't have the arrogance or blinkered mindset to zealously follow a single faith or scientific argument's tenets to the extreme, without sound reason to do so courage of your convictions.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 14:21, closed)

here's one....
So I lack courage? What exactly do you courageously believe in?

I'll argue with you on any topic I find interesting. I'll happily eliminate potantial explanations for why we exist from my pile of possibilities. For example I think the christian/jewish/islamic interpretations of gods are a bit rubbish, full of illogical holes and contradictions. I'm more inclined to believe in a pagan mythology, where the gods basically use us as reality TV, but get to fill the Big Brother House with killer bees if they get bored. The most likely explanation (if there is a deity of some sort) seems to be a totally uncaring creator which started our universe up but then left it alone.

This is just a snapshot of a thought process, but surely you can see that I do have my own views, but won't just offhandedly ignore possible paths of reasoning without at least considering them.
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:08, closed)

For me, being agnostic is being open-minded. Isn't that what science is all about? We don't know what created the Big Bang and brought the entirety of existance into being, so why would I automatically take the stance that there is no god, no being outside our universe that created it? I haven't seen any proof there is a god, but I certainly haven't seen any defining evidence disproving there is either.
(Tarana, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 14:45, closed)

Woo, sense!
I don't understand why people think there is a dividing line between science and gods. Evolution is well proven and in some cases observable, but whose to say there isn't something more than natural selection a play? I've got no idea. I reckon if you try and be nice if there is a god, he'll reward that and if there isn't, you'll be known as a nice person.
( Greenbat, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:03, closed)

yay for Agnostics
Agnostics are the nicest kind of people, they don't go round starting wars etc. I am an Atheist and religious people are prejudiced against me - they seem to think I don't respect their faith. Well, one couldn't respect someone's belief that 2 + 2 = 5 but I manage to let people get on with believing what they want to believe.
(biscuitsocks random gene expression, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:07, closed)