So the myth that science is separated from religion is just silly... ever see a black hole? A wormhole in time? A quanta? No! What you read helps you build your FAITH in these things... faith in God, or gods, comes to you in the same way. Same brain, same five senses, same preponderence of facts, figures... all that.

There's a big difference between faith and confidence. I have confidence in the theories of physics because they've been tested by observation and found to have predictive value. I have zero confidence in the natty ramblings of religion because they've also been tested by observation, and found to be lacking (when they aren't mutually contradictory to begin with). We aren't at the center of the universe. The earth is not flat. There are no gods perched atop Olympus, etc.

Oh and for the record, Sunspot, if you simply lack confidence in the existence of god you are not an atheist, you are an agnostic.

Wrong. But at least you're consistent – you can't do the science, and you can't do the philosophy, either. Agnosticism is the belief that the truth of certain claims – in this case, claims surrounding God – are unknown, inherently unknowable or incoherent, and therefore irrelevant to life (I just stole that from Wikipedia, but it's as good a definition of the term as I've seen anywhere).

I think the problem for religious types - and the frustration we see expressed by them in this thread - is that they think they can bullshit their way thru science the way they do through religion. Lots of handwaving about "unknowable" things and pseudoscientific crap about protoviruses (there is such a term, but it doesn't appear to have jack to do with early forms of life) and thermodynamics that are so obviously incorrect even a child could skewer them. The problem with science, even if you're a talented BS artist like that fraudulent cloning researcher in Korea, is that BS will only get you so far. Sooner or later you're going to come up against a lot of knowledgeable, smart, rigorous people and they're gonna hand you your ass on a platter.

Of course, with the crowd of religious apologists we've got around here, a half-crocked Alzheimer's patient could refute most of their obviously inaccurate prattle. Handwaving, appeals to perceived authority (Aristotle? Puh-leeze! What about the Platonic solids, guys?), and strawmen hauled in from out of left field do not a convincing argument make (no matter how many times you repeat the same tired tripe). Repetition works with religious indoctrination (i.e. brainwashing), but saying the same stupid, wrong, obviously ridiculous thing ten times in a row or ten billion times in a row won't make it the truth. It just makes you look like a childish idiot. Grow up, people. Your lives depend on it.

"As an atheist, I simply don't have any confidence in the definitions of god offered to date. "

O.k....now If I take this statement at face value, that means that as you do not have confidence in the definitions of god offered to date, that if a logical definition of god was presented you would accept it.

Hence you do not hold that god does not exist, simply that you do not accept current understandings of God.

Hence you are not an atheist, simply an agnostic.

Can you read? I'm not (just) being snarky – I really want to know. Because I posted the definition of agnostic in the very post you're replying to. An agnostic holds that it's impossible to know if there's a god or not. Since I made no such assertion, it should have been easy for you to conclude that I'm not an agnostic. This isn't rocket science. It isn't even Philosophy 101.

I'm an atheist – I don't have any confidence, let alone faith, in the idea of a god or gods. There's no evidence for them, our observations of the material world demonstrate no need for them, and the definitions of them offered to date are logically inconsistent.

Agnosticism never made a lick of sense to me. How can you know that it's impossible to know there's a god or not? Is there any experimental evidence to back that assertion up (nope!)? Either there is or there isn't, based on the evidence available, same as with everything else.

Also, for future reference wikipedia is not a good source for, pretty much anything.

It seems to be doing a much better job today than you are . . .

Yop could go back a lot further than that and still people were aware of a personal creator.

You could go back in time and find people who believed in a lot of other stupid things, too – that the Earth was flat, for example, or that witches float in water. Just because lots of people in the past were ignorant doesn't excuse you for being similarly ignorant. You're also assuming that all religions in the past revolved around some "personal creator". I hate to break this to you, but many of them did not.

Did your hissy fit make you feel better, paul?

In all fairness, there are a lot of variations in the definition of the term "agnostic", but when someone goes to the trouble of actually providing you with the exact definiton they're using, the least you can do is adhere to it.

Unless you want to, you know, look stupid.

There has never been a time when god didn't exist in the mind of man.

Isis? Zeus? Ganesh? Tree spirits? There was a time when the Earth was flat in the mind of man, too. He didn't know any better yet. Now he does.

Beyond that, do you have any evidence to back up this assertion you keep repeating? Or do you hope that the continued repetition of this alleged fact will somehow make it so?