Rosio Pavoris

Or weak agnostics, whatever you want to call them. The people who claim that there might be a god, but they aren’t sure, so they won’t take a stance.
In many ways, I understand these people less than I understand religious nuts. At least they have the excuse of indoctrination. All these weak atheostics seem to have is intellectual cowardice.

Consider Bertrand Russell’s teapot. This story is repeated very often, but apparently there are still people who don’t know about it.

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

If there is no reason to believe the teapot is there, why would you believe otherwise? Tradition, sure. That’s painfully stupid, but somewhat understandable.
Now, why would you deny it in the face of tradition? Common sense. Intellectual honesty. And so on.

I like the scientific method. Religion doesn’t stand up to it at all, of course. Neither does weak agnosticism. It doesn’t really apply to strong agnosticism, by definition, I guess. But when the scientific method is applied to religiosity and spirituality, the outcome will always be, in effect, strong atheism.

So, why do these weak atheostics stand by their conclusion?
I’m not sure. My guess is, mostly out of intellectual cowardice. Maybe out of fear of offending, though what they’re doing in trying to please both sides is annoy both of them, I’d guess.
Or maybe it’s the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” thing, combined with a powerful suspension of disbelief because they grew up in a religious environment.

Or maybe they’re just afraid that some day some deity will show up and prove himself, and then they’ll have been wrong all along, oh noes. D:
Protip: You’re allowed to change your mind in the face of new evidence. There are very few (strong) atheists who would keep denying the existence of a god when said god shows up and irrefutably proves his existence. We’re just saying that the chance of that is so incredibly remote that it just isn’t worth planning for by maintaining this wishy-washiness. It’s like Pascal’s Wager. Which is to say, dishonest bullshit.

Anyway, cut it out. Or at least be a deist.

(BTW, related to Russell’s teapot are the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But people seem to lose track of that in favor of retarded memery, especially when it comes to the FSM. Also, a more interesting counterpart to Pascal’s Wager would be the Atheist’s Wager.)