I have issues with a certain breed of religious people, following on from Erin's comment about 'doing the right thing'. These folk tell me that it is impossible for an atheist to be moral, because all morality stems from scripture. A nice self-fulfilling prophecy there, then.

I also have issues when people claim that religious beliefs should be immune from criticism, or that their practices should be because they are religion-based. Well, tough. If a religious belief espouses sexism, homophobia, bigotry of any sort, then I reserve the right to call a spade a spade. Westboro springs immediately to mind.
What is important, however, is courtesy. When at a dinner party, one does not discuss in public the large wart on another person's face, or the lack of attractiveness of their children. There are areas that good manners steer clear of. It's as simple as that.

My own beliefs have led to a LOT of arguments with a certain type of religious person. I am a fellow-traveller with Bertrand Russell here, who stressed the difference between the evangelical certainty that there is no deity on one hand, and the lack of any need to consider the existence of one on the other. His image was that of a purported teapot orbiting the Earth: some people might believe in it, some not, and the arguments would be ferocious. He simply dismissed the idea as unnecessary.

There you have it. I don't disbelieve in a god, I simply don't feel the need to consider his/her/their existence in the first place. A bit like phlogiston, or the ether. On the other hand, my religious friends here tell me I write good Christian sermons...

Good Heavens, Wallah, what am I to do?

GEEZ, I have atheists, agnostics, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, Amish, Mennonites, and spaghetti monster worshipers in my life. For me, it adds zest to life. I even have science fiction believers.

None are any threat at all to me. Today I will attend Jummah Prayer with Muslim Friends, Sunday I will go to church with Mormon friends, and if someone asks me to go somewhere and dance to HOT Middle Eastern Music, Yallah ! I will go.

Few people know, or care to know that I think Isaac Asimov's , "Foundation Trillogy" is probably the closest to the real facts that I know of.

The point is that if I read something, and I don't like it, then I, guess what? I STOP!

You call yourself an Agnostic, Erin, but what you describe is a Deist.

Also, you might consider that there are many atheists these days, who do not
consider agnostics to be atheists, because it really isn't the same thing. In
fact, you can be like me, an agnostic atheist, or a gnostic theist. The two terms
are not really mutually exclusive.

If you have come to a conclusion, and you've made a decision either way, you are
either a theist (and Deist is a type of theist.), or you are an atheist. Regardless
of what you decide with respect to weather or not a god exists, you may also explain
that you are Gnostic, which means that you hold some discrete knowledge, or some
body of knowledge, that convinces you either way.

The rub here, however, is that there are many out here who are like me, who do not
believe that anyone can be a Gnostic anything. An atheist can not disprove a negative,
as that is a logically inviolable impossibility. I know a great deal about religions,
and theologies, mythology and history... But you can never know the one bit of information that
you'd like to know to settle the question. Likewise, it is also apparent that no theist
knows something that passes on the order of an empirical proof. This is why they resort
to issues of faith and feelings, and just knowing. They may be perfectly happy
believing as they do, but then again, the actual proof they claim has always been, by the
rational standards applied to any other field of human inquiry, no proof at all. Thus,
bu any objective standard, they are agnostic as well.

Remember here, that when an anthropologist, or sociologist, refers to the term 'Belief,'
that he is referring to a concept that some group or individual holds to be true. The
concept itself may or may not be valid, true or untrue. They also work with the idea,
that even demonstrably false beliefs, are part of the body of knowledge for a culture,
because they are acted on as if they were. That is why a person like me, will most
often specify, the more objective and reproducible standard for knowledge, that is
empiricism. Epistemologicly, it is still only a subset, but its validity and superiority
as a way of knowing, is amply ratified by the scientific method.

Thus, although I find it perfectly descriptive for someone who does not feel that they
know, to describe themselves as an Agnostic, when a theist or and atheist describes themselves
as a Gnostic Atheist or a Gnostic Theist, my bull-shit alarm goes off immediately. Ten-
thousand years of recorded human history without tangible and reproducible evidence, isn't a
basis for claiming that knowledge even exists, let alone that it is held by an individual who
simply had not deigned to tell the rest of we curious folk.

Remember too, that Gnostic Christians where Christians who claimed secret knowledge, or
knowledge of rituals. There are many Gnostic orders and societies, that pertain to everything
from secret handshakes, to the budget for 2014. That isn't really the same as the entomological
considerations and standards that most atheists like myself are talking about when we discuss
Gnosticism as an adjunct to Theism, or Atheism.

Just something to think about.