Dear Mitchell,

Although I picked the book in a Bangkok hotel it was not Siamese. The Society for the Promotion of Buddhism based in Tokyo supplied the book. The text was English on the left hand page and Japanese on the right hand. Religions like any other human institution change through time, and we deal with them according to what they have become. Toward the end of the book is a glossary which includes the various traditions in Buddhism.

Physical reality is all we can detect so it is all we have evidence for. It seems more reason than dogma to concern ourslves with what we have evidence for. Because other people believe there is a god or gods or other supernatural entities is no reason for me to believe there is. There is much we do not know or possibly will never know about physical reality. Naturalism seems to me the most reasonable position. If we have evidence for the existence of something other than the physical reality we know that new evidence extends our physical reality. We then have a more extensive naturalism, but it is still naturalism.

Luciferase:
<I am seduced by science in the direction of certainty, no agenda>

On what is this "certainty" based in our anti-foundational world? Surely you've read some Richard Rorty?
And it's naive to think science has no agenda. Science has no ethical or political motivation--all things being equal--rather it parasitises and passively adopts the politics and agenda of its host; whoever provides the funding. Science has no agenda but that doesn't alter the fact that it developed nuclear weapons, germ warfare and gas chambers.
"Metaphysics is not the only game in town now". No it's not; there's also realism and pragmatics, but these have no veridical base either. Empirical science is based on metaphysics.
How do you square your "no agenda", btw, with the war cry: "You're agnostic until you show the balls to be otherwise"?
Agnosticism is the empirical conviction that knowledge of God is unachievable. Does it take balls to make assertions arbitrarily?
"only when science proves itself capable of producing a universe will agnostic-atheists stop believing God may exist?"
Creating a singularity in the collider, a notion generally treated as risible by the scientific community, is hardly tantamount to creating a "universe", or disproving the possibility of a God. And I'll remind you again that idealism is a product of the "phenomenal" universe, and not merely, or not necessarily, the human imagination. Who knows what the evolutionary potential of idealism is? Or what it's already achieved somewhere in the universe? or in what we conceive to be the "future"? There is altogether far more uncertainty to be ballsy about than certainty, and even theoretical physicists are revising their ambitious TOE down.
For me, now is a time to take stock, for science to help secure a viable future, before pontificating on a universal scale--we've had centuries of that already!
Now what is science doing to secure that future? Nothing. It's helping to condemn it in its unholy alliance with the prevailing mindless agenda.

Mitchell, that was a throwaway line about the collider, but who knows. Might be interesting to see

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/search/motherboard
and click on "Black Holes Big Bangs"

See Prof Otto Rossler at 10.32 mark and read his Seven Reasons for Demanding an LHC Safety Conference at

http://www.science20.com/big_science_gambles/blog/interview_professor_otto_r%C3%B6ssler_takes_lhc

Perhaps the only way to settle the argument is by completely annihilating ourselves!

Am checking out Rorty but am having a struggle. So what's the ugly agenda behind the collider anyway?

Grim,

In regards to “...one can be an Agnostic without being an Atheist”, what I should have said was, yes, they’d be an agnostic-theist. Atheism and agnosticism address two different questions.

Incidentally, what does Sagan’s open-mindedness have to do with what I said?

Oh, and yes I know what “de facto” means.

Luciferase,

<<You are not dealing with the challenge put to you by the schema other than to reassert an unclear distinction between knowledge and belief in relation to agnosticism.>>

I haven’t asserted anything of the kind. I haven’t even covered the difference between knowledge and belief. I’ve just taken if for granted that we all agreed on what they were, and neither of them changes in light of agnosticism.

By the way, I have made no assertions thus far. I have provided evidence and reasoned argument for every point I’ve made.

<<If you think perhaps construing a nuanced case for Q2A3 as being an atheistic position,...>>

Nothing I’ve said has been ambiguous and I haven’t construed anything. I’m going by accepted definitions and knowledge...

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism
http://tinyurl.com/829xv24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

I dealt with your challenge by reminding you that I had already answered it throughout my posts and it appears to have been enough for you to understand.

And your only response..?

<<...it won't wash with true atheists.>>

If, by “true atheists”, you mean people who strongly believe that Gods don’t exist, then don’t worry, I have a lot of friends who fit that description and they already agree with me here. And those I speak with who are naive in this area usually respond with something along the lines of, “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

In my experience, there are only two kinds of people who have a problem with all this:

1. Those elitist “agnostics” I mentioned earlier (who funnily enough, direct most of their criticism towards their fellow atheists);
2. Theists.

You and Grim carry on like I’m some buffoon who’s got it arse-backwards. But you need only utilise Google to see that everything I’ve said is accurate...

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Atheist_vs._agnostic
http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/what.htm
http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic
http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm
http://www.rationalresponders.com/am_i_agnostic_or_atheist

Would you like more?

Hi AJ,
I would have thought you and I have been discussing the nature of Atheism for too many years (remember Dan S. Merengue?) for you to accuse me of thinking of you as a buffoon. I simply don't bother to respond to (or in certain easily recognisable cases, read) people whose opinions I have no respect for.
And I would certainly never describe you as a “fence sitter”; indeed I agree with your self analysis.
Perhaps that is the essence of our disagreement, for I guess I could be considered a fence sitter, inasmuch as I can generally see value in both sides of most -well reasoned- arguments.
Hitchens, along with Dawkins, Harris, Dennet and others are advocates of “New Atheism”, and as scientists, their arguments are undeniably well reasoned. As I understand it, the essence of New Atheism -in comparison to the more laissez faire attitude of 'old' atheism- is that it's proponents do not accept that religions should be tolerated, or allowances made for.
Regarding formal religions, I'm inclined to agree. I certainly found Dawkins' arguments in the God Delusion quite compelling, and I'll concede the arguments are entirely applicable to Einsein's concept of a “personal god”.
I have yet to find however, any compelling arguments against the concept of an impersonal, pantheistic or “naturalistic” god (for want of a better word) such as described in the quote from Sagan. I also agree with Trevor's observation that we generally only argue about the gods which we conceive of, and pretty much ignore the inconceivable ones (as I interpreted his comment).
Considering our relative youth as a species (we could conceivably have millions of years ahead of us) this leaves us with virtually infinite possibilities.
BTW, thank you Mitchell, for -what I considered to be- an informative and well reasoned post.

Mitchell asks, "How do you square your "no agenda", btw, with the war cry: "You're agnostic until you show the balls to be otherwise"?"

I have the same respect for the intellectual position of the agnostic-atheist as I have for the agnostic-theist. Both are fence-sitters.

My agenda is, if you would call it one, to establish the primacy of "new atheism" referred to by Grim, and which is bound to science, over the old which is bound up in metaphysics. Huxley showed balls, saying "what possible objection can I have to these doctrines (God's existence etc)? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them."

Huxley clearly did not expect any metaphysical "evidence" but expected it to come through science. The trouble with you guys (less so Grim) is you have a mountain of evidence, not just a scintilla, yet you prevaricate to the point where you say that
"Creating a singularity in the collider....... is hardly tantamount to creating a "universe", or disproving the possibility of a God."

I read this to mean that even if science can produce a universe, you will remain a fence-sitter, taking the position of david f that all it would do is extend the boundaries of a naturalistic world, with the question of whether there is a God still remaining on the table.

If what you mean is that you can never know that God does not exist, then you are a permanent prevaricator, aka fence-sitter, with no more intellectual courage than the agnostic-theist.

Your definition "Agnosticism is the empirical conviction that knowledge of God is unachievable" is a further statement of the above"