<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Jan 29, 2011, at 10:20 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">An agnostic says it's not possible to know certain things, either in principle or in practice.</span></blockquote><br></div><div>But they do have faith that it's not possible to know certain things either in principle or in practice.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>This is what Isaac Asimov had to say on the subject in his autobiography:</div><div><br></div><div>"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." </div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite">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. </blockquote><div><br></div>I agree and so does Asimov:<br><br></div><div>"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." </div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><div><br></div></body></html>