Science, Religion, God – Let’s just be honest

I guess that somewhat depends on how advanced we become as a species. If we essentially become advanced and intelligent enough to understand all facets of how the universe (or multiverse) functions, then at that point, god may not have any places left to hide. Although at our current level of understanding, there is still plenty left 'unexplained'. I am actually glad you phrased things that way. Ultimately, one of my biggest issues in having conversations with religious individuals is them not being able to step back from their dogma.Science, in and of itself, has no opinion one way or another on 'god'. Partially because the term has become so abstract, it is difficult to find a cogent definition for god. But science does understand certain things and the mechanisms behind them. How lightning works, aspects of geology, and yes, even *gulp* evolution.
But religious individuals often spend so much time focusing on the more archaic concepts from their holy books, that they often become closed minded with blinders on with regards to how things actually are. Which is probably why you see many individuals nowadays moving to the 'non-denominational' side of the fence.

Exactly true. I find it fascinating that the concept is so difficult to grasp.Oftentimes, what helps in my dialog with religious individuals is to make them understand the notion of theism versus religion.A Christian is a theist. But not all theists are Christians. Some can be Muslim, Jewish, etc. So in this case, theism is an attribute of their view on the question 'is there a god'? But it is not, in an of itself, a religion.Buddhists are atheists. But not all atheists are Buddhist. Some can be Taoist, some can have no religion and no faith, etc. So as above, atheism responds to the same question: 'is there a god'? But in the same way theism cannot be a religion, neither can atheism. Both can be aspects of certain religions or both can simply be a viewpoint held by an individual that does not follow any religion.

And again, Dawkins and Hitchens stipulating their views in this regard are not in any way a reflection of 'atheism' per se. These are men who happen to be atheist stating a particular point. Keep in mind that as alluded to earlier, atheism in its strictest sense is merely a response to a claim: "do you believe in god"? Anything beyond that goes into personal beliefs or other religious tenets.For example, Buddhists are technically atheists. There is no concept of a personal god in their faith. Yet clearly, not all atheists are Buddhist. Just like not all theists are Christian. I can understand your view. But in the end, this is more akin to wanting a particular outcome than having evidence to back it up. It's not that different from religious individuals believing in god, an afterlife or cosmic justice because it is hard for them to process the notion that bad people get away with doing bad things. So religion fills the void by putting forth the notion that there is 'judgement' in the end for bad deeds.

This is actually a good question and a common misconception when people use the terms.To provide a little more breadth to the discussion, theism/atheism and gnosticism/agnosticism are actually conveying different things. Theism and atheism talk about 'belief' while gnosticism/agnosticism actually speak about 'knowledge'.For for example: an individual may ask someone the following question: "Do you believe in bigfoot?" The person may respond and say 'yes'. Then they are asked a followup question: "Are you certain bigfoot exists?" The individual may now respond 'No'. What is essentially occurring is that two questions are posited: one asking about the belief in a thing and the other asking about knowledge of a thing. Both yielded different answers.So from the belief/knowledge standpoint, in the above example, this individual is indicating they have a belief in something, but not necessarily stipulating absolute certainty.Now if we move over to the question of god, the style of questions are still the same. One can 'believe' in god but not be entirely certain. One can also not believe in god and also not be entirely certain. Both are displaying an 'agnostic' view on the knowledge portion but stipulating different answers to the belief question.To itemize, as it pertains to the discussion on god, you can basically classify individuals into the following brackets:Gnostic Theist - Believes in god and is absolutely certain he exists
Agnostic Theist - Believes in god but is not entirely certain he exists
Gnostic Atheist - Does not believe in god and is absolutely certain he does not exist
Agnostic Atheist - Does not believe in god but is not absolutely certain that he does not exist(Note I left out the Deism view in this case, but the that is adding a third parameter to the question)People often think that atheist and agnosticism are mutually exclusive when in fact, they are not. They are different responses to different questions.

In essence, you are correct. Those terms are now filling a slightly broader notion and have been somewhat usurped by various individuals conveying specific viewpoints. Which is not uncommon in the modern vernacular.I probably shouldn't have actually said 'agnosticism' and 'gnosticism' in absolute terms and just stated 'agnostic' and 'gnostic' to convey the concept of knowledge versus belief.

Some may agree that 'agnostic' is a useless term although others may disagree. I guess from my perspective, the term never really carried that much weight because I cannot, in many circumstances, know with absolutely certainty many things in my day to day life. So by that logic, we would all be agnostic in one way or another. I, for example, am pretty certain that pixies and dragons don't exist. Yet can I proclaim with absolute certainty that they don't exist? It would be difficult because I would need to prove a negative, which is nigh impossible in most circumstances.Although honestly, at some point, our critical thinking will emerge. So if a crazy person tells you they have an invisible pet dragon in their garage, my suspicion is we would probably pretty strongly assume the guy is batshit, rather than taking an agnostic view of the matter.