I also don't believe any "God claims." That is not the basis by which I claim agnosticism springs. The question of agnosticism is not "which of mankinds claims about deities" is correct: the question is that of ultimate cause, prime mover, whatever you want to call it; the question is "given what we can - ever - know, what caused that?" The idea is that this is a valid question, but we, either now or at some point in the very near future, will reach an event horizon beyond which our ability to "know" a thing no longer functions, and THEREFORE it's stupid. Shut up about it. Both of you. All of you.
In my opinion, many people who listen to modern atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens rightly are swayed against religion, but I do think that they trespass in hubris when they intimate - as they sometimes have (though they are careful about it, and Dawkins, at least, has hedged into de facto agnosticism on several occasions), that the existence of a deity is impossible or even highly improbable. The fact is that there is absolutely no data available for such a non-question, shut up. This is what scientists will actually say. Try it: go outside a lab and find a scientist (in a lab coat, stupid) on their way back from lunch, and ask them to comment on whether or not god exists: they will look at you and laugh at you and go back to work testing shit on animals and/or (increasingly) lab-grown human cells.
|