I haven’t read all the posts here but I wished to respond to people who are telling Tim he is agnostic. I would suggest that you read Richard Dawkins excellent book The God Delusion, where Dawkins lays out the different degrees of atheism. Dawkins Himself feels that most aheists should accept that a God may exists, however unlikely. Like any good scientist we should be aware that we can only ever prove that something is 99.9% correct. Even in a situation where you are sure you are right you can still be wrong.

Tim, right on man. Stick with your own beliefs no matter what others think.

TRiG.

Agnostics say that a God might not exist.
Atheists say that a God does not exist.
I say that a God cannot exist.

Nothing is immune to scientific enquiry. If God is outside the realm of scientific study, then God is irrelevant. If a superhuman entity is amenable to study, I wouldn’t call that particular being a God. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism The question of falsifiability also remains. Some non-theists continue to have that primitive image of a bearded male human in their heads, and they cannot shake it away. By failing to actively consider the definition and origins of God, they close themselves to scientific thought and go with the popular, politically correct view of agnosticism or doubtful atheism.

Anyway, a great comic that is very much needed. I now have another 150 excellent URIs to silence cheerfully deluded people wherever I go.

Atheist: A person who lacks a belief in god.
Agnostic: an atheist who lacks balls/ovaries/gonads.

Absence of belief in any God.

Belief in the absence of any Gods.

I would certainly classify my own views under the first heading. I have some problems with the second, though it seems a more plausible thing to believe than any of the alternatives. Maybe I’m on the atheist side of agnosticism, maybe I’m on the agnostic side of atheism. Does it really matter?

I do feel, however, that if there is a supreme being out there, and if He gives a damn about whether I believe in Him or not, He’d have DONE something about it by now.

And no, getting Himself nailed to a tree 2000 years ago doesn’t count.

Tim and LQ are representatives of most who call themselves atheists. They allow that in the unlikely chance that a god should manifest itself with real evidence of its existence, then belief would be necessary.

From this perspective, I find it curious to watch debates between agnostics and atheists as to which is right.

For some, it is that the label atheist is too unpleasant, given all the efforts to demonise it by the religious.

An agnostic professes that they do not know whether or not there is a god.
An atheist denies the existance of a god.

Saying that one does not believe in a God, but one is open to evidence to the contrary, makes one an atheist to my mind.

Saying that one cannot be convinced by evidence, is closed minded and unscientific.

Since I happen to believe that there will be no evidence that I cannot demostrate to be the result of flawed methology or experimental confounds, it really makes no difference though.