Is agnosticism more intellectually honest?

I think it was on the talk.orgins newsgroup years ago that I read this description of going beyond beating a dead horse: "Furiously whacking a patch of ground where, ten years previously, there had lain a dead horse."Not that we've even begun to reach that point yet.Certainly, one label does not fit all. Everybody's beliefs are their own, arrived at in their own way -- as Unitarian-Universalism teaches, we each build our own theology, something that a fundamentalist Christian co-worker agreed with (though I suspect that most would not). With certain sects, especially those that more aggressively train their followers, their label more closely fits their members, but with less strict denominations we will see much greater variance of beliefs and attitudes, such that their label does not fit very well. How even less so, then, does the label of "atheist", with a list of specific beliefs and attitudes, actually fit real atheists, especially since there is no one single unifying doctrine, but just the single fact that they do not believe in the gods (which itself can have at least two meanings -- see below).These labels, like most words, have both their denotations (the meaning of the word) and their connotations (ideas and emotions that are attached to those words by various groups). For example, the Gautama Buddha taught against believing in the gods, because that would only prevent you from attaining Enlightenment, but, even though that would make Buddhism essentially atheistic, very few Buddhists would want to describe themselves as atheists because they see it as carrying materialistic connotations. Another example is how creationists have employed the term "evolutionist" as a denotation for anyone who accepts evolution, but overloading it with all kinds of negative connotations (eg, atheist, anti-God, trying to destroy Christian children's faith, cannot be trusted, will not tell the truth) so that when their opponent accepts the label of "evolutionist" he has already lost the debate; for that reason, I do not like the term.Similarly, as you have observed, there are some rather vicious connotations our society has attached to "atheist". I have been subjected to virulent discrimination with extreme prejudice by an "absolutely non-sectarian" national organization with international ties because of what they believed about my being an atheist, not about what I actually believe. So many times a fundamentalist (usually in an online creationism discussion) would viciously attack me for holding a long litany of "atheistic" beliefs and attitudes, none of which I hold nor would hold. And certain ones would come repeatedly and independently, meaning that they had to have come from somewhere -- once while visiting an ex-Christian forum, one ex-Christian quoted some Bible verses which contained those exact same "atheist traits", so that's one source (unfortunately, I did not write down the references and was never able to find that post again).And those negative images and attitudes about atheists are taught and emphasized over and over again so that they have become "common knowledge". Used to be that atheists were the least trusted and least popular group in the US, but then after 9-11 Muslims bumped us back to the #2 spot (with Mormons bringing up third). But now, as linked to in another topic here, NY Times reports that the Tea Party and the Religious Right have now surpassed atheists in unpopularity (see http://www.nytimes.com/...pinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html), so there is still hope.As said, we have all arrived at our own personal theologies in our own ways, even though we may use a common label to describe ourselves. For that reason, I normally shy away from atheists' discussions of the definition of "atheist"; we each have our own ideas about that definition which don't usually agree with each other.Joke:

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The new arrivals to Hell are being given their orientation tour. One feature of Hell is that each religion has its own area with torments tailored that that religion based on the beliefs that they agree on. Then the group comes to one area where everybody's standing around drinking coffee and talking. "What group is this?" "Those damned atheists! They can't agree on anything!"

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Though when I originally heard it, that group was Unitarian.Here's my take:
The supernatural is a problem. We cannot sense it, so we are unable to observe it or even detect it. We cannot know anything about it, including whether it even exists. We cannot positively say that it exists and we cannot positively say that it does not exist. Even less so can we describe in precise detail the qualities of supernatural beings more commonly called "the gods". All we can positively say about the supernatural is that we cannot know anything about it.I would agree that agnosticism -- meaning the realization that we cannot know anything about the supernatural -- is the only honest position we can take. From there, we would need to proceed on assumptions, AKA "on faith", or decline to proceed. The two basic assumptions that one would make would be theism or atheism.In the theistic assumption, one decides that the supernatural does exist as do the gods. From there, one would need to make more assumptions regarding the identities of the gods, their characteristics, and entire intricately detailed theologies. A theistic agnostic could not help but realize how increasingly untenable this position becomes, being based on a long chain of assumptions; a non-agnostic would not realize this. An honest theistic agnostic would need to keep in mind that his theistic beliefs must be held tentatively.In the atheistic assumption, one assumes that the supernatural does not exist and hence neither do the gods. Beyond this point, no further assumptions need be made. Of course, an honest atheist would need to keep in mind that this assumption must be held tentatively, since there is no positive proof that the supernatural does not exist and even though this assumption is the safer and more certain one. I am not sure what to say about non-agnostic atheists, which I would assume must exist.Though there are variants of the atheistic assumption, which also alludes to variants of the theist assumption. For example, an atheist might not make the philosophical assumption that the supernatural does not exist while making the working assumption that it does not; i.e., allow for its possible existence while proceed as per the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, that it does not.Part of that reasoning is that even if the supernatural does exist, we still have no way of knowing whether the gods exist. And if the gods do exist, we still have no way of knowing anything about them. Instead, all we have are theists' manifold webs of assumptions about the gods. Even if the gods were to exist, how am I to believe what other humans, similarly incapable of perceiving the supernatural, tell me about them? Even if one of the gods were to communicate that information to a person (AKA "Revelation"), then, as Thomas Paine observed, as it got repeated to others it would immediately become hear-say and hear-say upon hear-say many times over. And instead of describing the actual god, these followers create their own version of that god that over time deviates more and more from the original actual god.The question "Do you believe in God?" has different meanings. One is whether one believes that this "God" exists. And that itself has different meanings. Does an actual supernatural entity/force/ whatever exist that could be called "God"? If so, then is it the same thing as what believers in "God" mean by "God"? Not likely. What's more likely is that Man has created "God", mainly in his own image, in order to explain and describe what he imagines about the supernatural. Man would have created "God" thus whether some supernatural "God" actually existed or not. Thus, the question "Do you believe in God?" actually refers to that abstract creation of Man and not to an actual supernatural god. And as an abstract creation of Man, "God" does not exist.The other meaning is whether one can put one's faith in this "God" and in what Man says about "God". Substitute other things and concepts for "God". Does fascism exist? Yes, it does. Do you believe in it? No, you don't. (one would sincerely hope not) Does my ex-wife exist? Unfortunately, yes. Do I believe in her? Hell no! So then by answering "no" to this meaning of "Do you believe in God?", I'm saying that I cannot put my faith in what Man has made up about "God", nor in the "God" that Man has created.I am an atheist and I have been one for the past 48 years. Basically, what I mean by that is described in the previous four paragraphs.