Is agnosticism more intellectually honest?

How can we claim to know anything? If philosophy has achieved anything over the last two thousand years it's demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that we can't be 100% certain of anything.So, the rational course of action is to retreat from 100% certainty to trying to give the best answers we can. Fortunately, we've developed over the last few hundred years a pretty good way of getting at these best answers: science or, more specifically, the scientific method. Empirical investigation of the world has allowed us to understand a breathtaking array of things.Take lightning as an example: the Norse thought it was Thor's hammer being thrown at the giants, we now know it's an electrical discharge. Does understanding electricity let us prove that Thor's hammer is not involved? Or that particular lightning strike you just saw was an electrical discharge? No. Instead, we follow the rational approach of assuming that once we've got a decent, consistent explanation for things that we've derived via the scientific method from empirical investigation of the world that we can discount other explanations and assume that the explanation holds in all cases until counter-evidence is found. We ignore other blurted explanations unless we can find evidence for them.Where, then, does that leave god? There is no empirical evidence for god. God has never been derived from empirical investigation of the world via the scientific method. The only reason we even given theism any mind at all is that an awful lot of people already believe in it. If someone came up with the idea of god today, we'd simply ignore them because of their overwhelming lack of evidence. That isn't the case with any scientific fact: if no-one knew about evolution, say, we could still deduce it from the world and show our working and evidence. Ditto DNA, gravity, Hooke's Law, etc., etc.I don't believe god created the universe for the same reason I don't believe the equally rational explanation that it was spunked into existence by a giant fish being masturbated by a baboon - there's no rational reason to believe. There's no evidence.

Not so. A belief can be honestly held while still being intellectually dishonest.Intellectual honesty is about the internal consistency of beliefs, and the willingness to recognise, accept and deal with criticism and challenge to those beliefs in a rational manner.

I don't know about 'need', but they're not intellectually honest unless they are.That's one of the cornerstone of what intellectually honest belief systems are all about.

It's not a question of belief, that's just flat what the term "intellectually honest" means.