Please tell me who here asserts certainty. I don’t. Richard Dawkins doesn’t. I’ve been debating this subject on-line for about 40 years and I can think of only one atheist who did, and he was an idiot. (Not in the SDMB.)
Strong atheism is about believing that no god exists, which is far different from asserting knowledge that no god exists. That’s foolish, since it is a big universe and no one can claim even uncertain knowledge for almost all of it. If you equate God with Christian God of the inerrant Bible, that’s a different story, but that is only one of a multitude of gods. And there are the versions of god which are undetectable by definition.
As for science, when you do an experiment you include the probability that the results are due to chance. But little science I’ve seen includes “we’re not 100% certain” for every certain, since it is implied. I got taught not to use adjectives that imply certainty, since they can give one the impression that you are certain.
Physicists believed in Newton’s Laws with at least as much fervor as even the strongest of atheists believe there are no gods. But they rather quickly abandoned them as being exactly correct given evidence against them. I’m pretty sure most atheists would do the same given equally strong evidence for a god. That no such evidence exists, despite god supposedly cares about us, is still more reason to believe that no god exists. But not proof of course.
The thing is, someone who truly believes that God is unknown and unknowable should just shut up, since any claim they make about god is just contradicting their position.
But we all know that the real position is that they know all about god and his wishes until they get challenged.
Are you really suggesting that “it must have started with something?” The old tired assed argument of those unable to think one single step further and ask why would we care about god and not worship the god that created the god that created the universe? because it certainly looks like it
I always wondered what the reason was behind thinking that that, if some “god” created the universe, that “god” must be the “First Cause”. Why is “the god that created that god” not seriously considered by religionists?
What, you’ve never heard of Super God?
Can God wear a cape so long even He can trip over it?
[Edna Mode]NO CAPES![/em]
Can Satan build a jet engine so large God’s cape can get sucked into it?
I believe that is what Nietzsche wrote in “Die frohliche Wissenschaft”. If I remember correctly there were no witnesses but the physical evidence was compelling.
Because that is a massive hole in their entire argument, I mean Obviously God is the uncaused first cause that had to be the cause that caused the universe otherwise we are only here because…
Actually they define God as the thing that doesn’t need a cause. Cute, huh?
The real problem is that this is a pre-Copernican argument. When the entire universe was the earth and the planets that revolved around it and little speckles that we call stars, the first cause being our God kind of made sense. In a big universe I wonder why they think the first Cause has anything to do with us. Why wait so long for us to appear. You’d think this God would actually care about the first intelligent species that popped up.
For over three decades I’ve challenged people who believe in the First Cause argument to link that God with their god. No one ever has.
Shut up, REALLY? You're lumping, emotionally, and it's adolescent. In any event, this one seems popular--on the topic of god-as-transcendent those here who ridicule this with "something which is unknowable" being arbitrary in all its defining features or incapable of having any influence, which is silly, and lazy, and a convenient blind. For example, why can't an unknowable entity manifest in certain ways? Do you understand why a neutron leaving a nucleus goes one way or another? Yet it doesn't stop you from using nuclear power. Really, this "unknowable" element is being abused, and re-abused, with convenient play on connotation.
As for Mr Dibble's objections to transcendence in a god... One thing, in fariness, that might be tripping you up is the "that" in "God is that which is beyond knowing". I don't think this reads as "God is ALL/everything that is beyond knowing" (which you seem to think) but that "God is an entity beyond knowing", and this not-knowingness is ontological (see the "manifest" point at this post's start).
Wuhh? I have to say, I'm baffled by your position. Either (a) you ARE an atheist but are dissembling, in which event you either simply state "I don't believe in god" fine, good and done, or you keep your views out of it and look for believers' definitions of the entity. (Or do you pretend arrogantly to preside, solo, over all definitions of god? If so, why should somebody cowboying around an internet thread trump a religious studies scholar, or the several definitions (as I've already referenced twice) containing terms like the ones you so dislike?) In any event, in the you-as-an-atheist case, you seem to want your cake and eat it too, "sprinkling atheism" into the definition. That won't work. Save the thread for what it's really about, the agnostics, who by that definition exhibit some sense of belief, and can participate, less biased, in debating definitions. or (b) you admit some level of belief in a god, in which event how on earth can you deny some element of transcendence (and throw in the "arrogance" objection from (a) for good measure too)???
And FWIW, "Bullshit", no matter how you try to spin it, is not eloquent.
I think there is more to it than this. The theist-agnostic-atheist line is one axis, reflecting merely the degree of belief/disbelief, but another axis exists in which one’s attitude is measured.
I am an agnostic. I do not worship any god or gods but cannot completely rule out their existence (although I think it highly unlikely). Attitude-wise, I completely reject the concept of a god or pantheon of gods (at least any that have ever been presented to me) as I find them flawed, objectionable and in some cases quite vile. By this I mean, that even with 100% certainty (I.e. proof) of the theist position, I would not, in all likelihood, fall to my knees and surrender myself the the whims of the divine being(s). Yes, I suppose that if a particularly cruel and violent god ordered me to follow it with threats of eternal suffering for non-compliance, I might do as I were told, but I would always harbour hatred and resentment.
What is this “something which is unknowable”? I can understand “Something we do not yet know”, but how the hell can something be permanently unknowable?
Magic spell?
A curse?
A deathtrap set to go off if the secret is ever revealed?
Have you got one of those axis-thingies for gnomes? They are much more likely than most gods out there. Besides gods, how many more mythological/fictional creations are you agnostic about?
I see that I’ve taken some punches while I’ve been away. 
So let me say a few things.
I’m a little surprised by the atheist-fueled hostility that is apparently driving a misinterpretation of what I’m saying, as if a lot of folks are accustomed to having to brush off annoying evangelicals and lump everyone into this category who isn’t a diehard God-denier. My position is not about justifying a Biblical God, either on the basis of a First Cause or on any other basis. It’s really more about Nietzsche’s philosophical conundrum, “why is there something rather than nothing?” A conundrum which, not so incidentally, Lawrence Krauss has tried to answer so glibly and misleadingly (specifically, by basing his entire argument on the false premise that empty space is “nothing”). And which we’ve also tried to answer, more reasonably, with such approaches as the various formulations of the anthropic principle which are, arguably, not science at all but at best at the intersection of science and philosophy.
Krauss has argued, as I said earlier, that physics has now rendered both philosophy and religion obsolete. I’ll put aside the loaded question of religion and ask whether philosophy has any role to play in the advancement of knowledge. For the record, I would consider myself an agnostic, a secular humanist, and a strong believer in the contributions that philosophy can make to science and to the advancement of knowledge. That includes a better understanding of the nature of the universe, an understanding that ultimately must transcend a purely scientific one. That’s a much more accurate summation of my position than the various trite religionist misinterpretations that have been put on it by apparently over-enthusiastic atheists.
It’s been a while since I read it but IIRC there’s a lengthy chapter in it with the title “Why God almost certainly does not exist” which contains a long list of points ridiculing the God of traditional religions and their scriptures. What I get from this is that Dawkins is first of all setting up a very specific target – the benevolent anthropomorphized God of traditional religion – then by pointing out how irrational this is, he is clearly advancing the no-God position of the strong atheist. His use of the conditional “almost” is merely a scientist’s pedantry. One does not go around writing books and giving lectures about things one is uncertain or ambivalent about.
I’m sure they can’t. This is getting off topic, but that’s a very poor argument because, unlike the event horizon itself, the radiation isn’t intrinsic and isn’t a theoretical necessity – it’s a technical objection that might not be valid. For instance, if a relatively small amount of matter was being accreted, the temperature of the accretion disk might be low enough to preclude large amounts of high-energy radiation.
No, you can’t. If you can make such inferences you’re dealing with the natural world, by definition.
A “gap” is something that can be bridged with more grant money. The intrinsic limits of science isn’t a “gap”.
Do you have a cite for this allegation of “fiction”?
Yeah, it’s commonly misused that way (so much so, actually, that one might consider the misuse a valid idiom) and I’m frequently guilty of it myself. So sue me. 
I never said it was a metaphor for anything. Shroedinger’s thought experiment was not a valid criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation and fails on several different levels.
The irony with some of the folks here in fighting religious ignorance is they risk replacing it with another type, from this sound drubbing of sweaty-faced tent revivalists, to strangling certain important elements of the human imagination (including those that can very much coexist with science, even reflect it).
Here is a favorite quote of mine from McCarthy's Blood Meridian, a violent (and yes, bloody) novel set in the old west. McCarthy is known for eschewing creative types and hanging out with scientists. It speaks to some of what's being discussed here and I think some of the anti-tabernacle paranoia--that what is strange is not the idea that the universe is strange, but that the pea-brains we all have do as good a job as they do of making some sense of it.
"The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
"The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others." [p. 256]
A singularity? The preconditions of the universe? Whether there is intelligent life in another galaxy? The exact dimensions of this universe? How many universes there are on the head of a pin? 
No I don’t, and neither do I need one. The existence of gnomes is pretty much irrelevant to me. If they do exist, great. If they don’t, fine. God(s), on the other hand do matter, if only because other people want me to do certain things and avoid doing other things on the strength of their own beliefs.
My position, as an agnostic who finds the concept of god abhorrent, is in many ways stronger than that of the atheist position. When somebody tries to push their faith on to me, their argument fails in two ways:
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I don’t have enough evidence to believe in your god. I can’t prove it doesn’t exist, but this is irrelevant because…
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…even if you could prove your god’s existence to me, I’m not going to worship it because it appears to be an asshole.
If you know that God did this or that God did that and that God wants us to have sex with certain people in certain positions, then God is neither unknown or unknowable, is he? The problem is not that God is perfectly known, it is that he is not known at all. That out is usually used by theists pressed into a corner about contradictions in their belief. As I said, most of the time they think they know quite a bit about God.
The Deists on the other hand truly believe that God is unknowable, but they mostly don’t try to tell us what he wants, so they’re cool.
I’m a practical guy. People can believe what they want about God, known or unknown. But when they start transmitting God’s commands, they better have some evidence that is where they came from. Certain aspects of God might be beyond knowing, but if one thinks all God is then he shouldn’t talk about knowing what God wants.
BTW I was playing on Tom Lehrer, who spoke about the complaint about the failure to communicate, popular 50 years ago. He said, thos who find that they can’t communicate should just shut up. (From memory, no time to play the CD.)