Things have soured over the past ten years , and I'm not sure if I could have the same debates today as I did thirty years ago. Steve's agnostic positions have been politely expressed as far as I can see , and I don't think they would have evoked such a hostile reaction here ten years ago . But Steve is wrong to think that there is no such thing as a new militant atheism out there that is goading religious people , getting their backs up . The same atheists that published the anti- Islam Danish cartoons in 2005 in Ireland in the name of toleration , a few years later started organizing crucifixion parties on Good Friday - again in the name of toleration.

If there is a brand of atheism that gets its oxygen from goading, then I distance myself from it. Likewise, those bloody idiots who thought it was a great idea to publish those cartoons are not in my camp. A good atheist is not interested in demonising. A good atheist is only interested in saying that their particular stance is predicated on their understanding of the evidence for and against the existence of God. As God can never be either proved nor disproved, all any of us have is evidence. It's down to you whether you accept tradition, witness, hearsay, edicts, visions and the sayings of holy men as evidence, or whether you set the bar higher. In the latter case, no "evidence" ever makes it and never will. That does not disprove God, but it makes rational people see that the likelihood of his existence is so small as to be completely inconsequential.