@A10anis

Agnosticism is an epistemological position of the uncertainty of knowledge of things. In other words, the nature of knowledge about God, or knowledge in general really, as many above have pointed out (I'm taking it you did read the nice chart above!). Theism or Atheism is a position, either knowingly or unknowing rejecting or accepting the idea of God; one can be explicitly or implicitly atheist (like all children not exposed to the idea are implicitly atheist). Agnostic Atheist is the most common position, but few people have complete understanding of all the concepts involved, or have their own private understandings of what they mean; making any unilateral criticism troublesome. As to the foundations of science and Mathematics, Kurt Gödel had had a great role to play in the destruction of what most peoples concept of certain systems are. And the o so smart Karl Popper ideas on falsifiability has thrown the antique notion of certain truth from science against the wall, in which modern Philosophers of Science, like Hilary Putnam have found intractable to solve, except to say that very little separates, currently, the foundations of science form the foundations of any other dabble of the imagination. Einstein talked about this as well, that wonderment is really the pursuit of all great scientists...not certainty.

As to my original claim, that science has truths it can not rectify, I leave it to better minds to explain the problems of induction. David Hume, Nelson Goodman, and Kurt Gödel drastically changed any view of certain knowledge from science and maths that I had. The untenable nature of the empirical evaluation of reality is just as uncertain as Abrahamic codifications being real.

I close with this, some of the greatest minds in the history of science and philosophy had no problem, nay, drew power from the deep richness they gathered from their faith. It drove them to the limits of the thoughts of their day, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing (who kept some vestibules of faith even after what happened to him), Georg Cantor, and countless others all had some "irrational" faith was more than just a ideal system of commands by some dead people, it drove them to greatness, and in many cases to rejection and madness of their "rational" peers. Georg Cantor, the father of the REAL infinite, died in a mental institution only to have his ideas lite a fire in the minds of the next generation of mathematicians.

It is my believe that we all want to have issue with x number of people, and make peace with y number. We elevate the slightest difference, or conversely, ignore a great flaw to peg this mark just right for us. Perhaps my y is just bigger than your x, or most peoples x as I find this debate I have is a common one; for tolerance, peace, and consideration. If you still think what I am saying is non-sense, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another. I hope I cleared up my thoughts a bit more, I am not very good at communicating things that are more than just the average amount of esoteric.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
--Blaise Pascal

chub, "It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason." -- Blaise Pascal

Oh, glad to see Blaise agreed that "God" is something which exists within people who refuse to reason.

Tell me, chub, what makes you so sure your god is the real one, out of the several hundred gods presently being worshipped by people around the world?

http://www.godchecker.com

This is like asking a 6 year old kid what makes him so sure Superman is the real superhero out of all the characters in the Marvel pantheon.

devlin, to address your question "I think it takes a lot of faith to be an atheist . . . what if you are wrong?"

Why would someone need faith to believe that something that has no evidence for its existence doesn't exist? Do you have faith that there are no goat-people living on Jupiter, or do you just accept such a notion as the nonsense that it is and get on with your day? Are you confronted with a painful dilemma every time you watch an episode of the Twilight Zone? "OMG! What if that was all real!??"

You might just as well say "I think it takes a lot of faith to believe there isn't an all-knowing cow living on the planet Mercury who will send you to eternal damnation if you don't floss every day. . . what if you are wrong?"

I agree that quoting the Bible makes little sense when speaking to an atheist since a Christian believes that the scriptures are inspired by God and the atheist does not believe in God. However, the Bible does not only contain the wise sayings of sages, but descriptions of people and events – historical references -- that can be substantiated or disproved by comparing them with accounts provided by secular historians of the day. Since the Bible contains detailed genealogies of actual people who lived and died, it is quite reasonable for an atheist to believe in the historically verifiable pieces of the Bible while still discounting the parts that cannot be proven. If the Bible has been shown to historically accurate, the atheist should have no trouble agreeing that Jesus Christ was a descendant of King David, who was a descendant of Moses. In fact in the face of historical texts, it would take more faith to disbelieve this. It is also reasonable for an atheist to agree with the Christian that a man born in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ, during the rein of Cesar Augustus does appear to fulfill many prophesies written concerning a future descendant of King David (most notably that he would claim to be the son of God and that he would be put to death for it). What we do with this claim is the primary thing that separates the Christian from the Atheist.

But let's be clear on what is in the Bible and what is not. Slyrr is quoting the Book of Mormon, not the Bible. There is a big difference. The Book of Mormon was unearthed and translated from text inscribed on shiny sheets by Joseph Smith (founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints) in 1823. According to Wiki, these texts were only shown to eight people and most of them fell away from the religion, so the whole thing seems rather suspect to me. I see no historical basis for it that can be substantiated.

Snake: I noticed that you quoted Blaise Pascal. Pascal devoted much of his life to using reason and logic to argue for the existence of God, it seems odd to use one of his quotes to argue the opposite.
"It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason." -- Blaise Pascal

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. -- Seneca the Younger 4 bc- 65 ad

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. -- Steven Weinberg

Men never commit evil so fully and joyfuly as when they do it for religious convictions -- Blaise Pascal

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet -- Napoleon Bonaparte

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence -- Doug McLeod

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. -- Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890)

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason -- Benjamin Franklin