So, Steve, how long have you had this serious problem with uncertainty?   Are you so uncomfortable in accepting a large degree of uncertainty that you are indeed off Mudcat the control freak you appear in this thread?   And if so, I wonder how your family and acquaintances deal with it.

"The agnostic has no problem with a large degree of uncertainty.   You, on the other hand seem very ill at ease with anybody who does, and of course particularly anybody who believes the opposite of your view.

How's your blood pressure, by the way?

And just where did the persecution complex come from (threatened by the fact that religious broadcasts exist)?    Sorry, they do, but I assure you they can do you no harm as long as you are not subjected to actually listening to them.    Of course who knows what irreparable damage might be done to you if you actually did hear one.

Control freak with a persecution complex.   An interesting study."

Poor Ron. What a terrible, awful, bitter, vitriolic and utterly childish post. Please leave it in place, oh moderators, to stand forever as testament to Ron's bilious frustration.

...................................................................

However. Ahem. I truly don't have a problem with anyone wishing to label themselves agnostic, but I will (if they want) give 'em a damn good squabbling. I'm not talking about that vast number of apathetic almost-ex-believers, the lapsed majority, who don't give a monkey's bloody mickey for religion one way or the other but who, if pressed, may demur in the final analysis from calling themselves atheists (religion, unfortunately, has, in a quite unjustified manner, forced people not of its persuasion to waste their time rationalising their demurral). I happen to think that such apathy is totally justified and meritorious and I applaud it for putting religion into the place it truly deserves. But I'm not really talking about them, even though they probably form the vast majority of "agnostics." I'm talking about the few who actually profess to have thought it all through but still claim not to know and that they can probably never know. I find it very odd that they seem to have suspended belief in the laws of physics and to still have lent credence to the possibility of a being who is far more complex and inexplicable than the things he was invented to explain. Now I can't know that that isn't true, either, and neither (he admits cheerfully) can Dawkins, but we *can* weigh up the odds, and the odds just have to be vanishingly small (or long?? - I'm not a betting man). Agnosticism is either an intellectual sidetrack or it's intellectual dishonesty. It also gives succour to believers, in just the same way as Nick bloody Clegg and his right-wing morons give succour to the Tories. That doesn't annoy me but it is very disappointing to see in intelligent people. Watch out there, agnostic - there's a believer round every corner waiting to put his arm round your shoulder!