[ExI] Fw: Re: atheists declare religions as scams.

[John Clark]

On Jan 29, 2011, at 10:20 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote:

> An agnostic says it's not possible to know certain things, either in principle or in practice.

But they do have faith that it's not possible to know certain things either in principle or in practice.

Technically I'm an agnostic too in that I can't prove the nonexistence of God, but people who go to great pains to point out that they are a agnostic not a atheist seem a little silly to me because, judging from the equal respect they give to both believers and atheists, they incorrectly think both viewpoints are equally rational. I am certainly not that sort of agnostic, not even technically.

This is what Isaac Asimov had to say on the subject in his autobiography:

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time." 

> if there really was a Supreme Being, and it was everything it's cracked up to be by the god-squad people, I'd feel morally obliged to oppose it. 

I agree and so does Asimov:

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." 

 John K Clark

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