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Originally Posted by JohnnyB
Religion is not a slope down to agnosticism. Agnosticism is non-religious. A better representation might be a sort of U-shaped graph moving from religious extremism on one side down to agnosticism in the middle, and up to atheistic extremism on the other. Atheism and theism are alike in that they are both faith-based positions, agnosticism is not.
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How can the absence of believe be a faith based position. Atheism isn't the blind belief (faith) that there is no God, it's the default position taken by a rational person when there's no evidence.
Does a believer in God have faith there is no Zeus? No, they simply don't believe there is a Zeus because there's no indication that Zeus exists.
I would say agnosticism is MORE faith based than Atheism, since an agnostic believes that the nature of God is inherently unknowable, not based on any evidence but just by faith that it's the nature of reality.
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I would say religion is more about faith and values. How can you say religion is about not critically challenging things when many of the people responsible for scientific progress are religious people?
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I agree, religion is about faith and values.
But religion is based on faith, not evidence. By definition faith is belief without evidence in the authority of something; dogma. So religion isn't about critically challenging things.
The fact that some scientific people are religious is as meaningful as the fact that some religious people are murderers.. It's not a cause and effect relationship. And the amount of religious people in science and such are lower than in the general public.