First, I'd like to address atheism vs agnosticism. Agnosticism is the idea that truth is unknowable. It refers to any absolute truth, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'm primarily concerned with the existence of a deity. I'll be right up front with you: agnosticism is an unassailable position. You can claim to be an agnostic and you will always be right, because nothing is ultimately knowable. Think of the old chestnut about whether you perceive red the same way I do. This cannot be conclusively proven either way, so we are all Red Agnostics. We cannot conclusively prove that there isn't a god, nor can we conclusively prove that there is one, be it YHWH, Allah, Flying Spaghetti Monster, teapot, Cthulhu or Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living. This renders agnosticism a philosophically useless position. Similar to what Dash said in The Incredibles, if every god is possible, that's essentially the same as saying no god is. The question is whether we have any reason to believe one thing over another.
I believe the concept of god (not any specific interpretation of one, just the general idea of such a thing) betrays humankind's arrogance. Taking a step back from the question of whether there is or isn't a god, I wonder why it was even posed in the first place. Man perceives himself as the highest order of life on Earth, and by extension, the universe. So we say "Here we are, the greatest thing that has ever existed, and yet there is so much we don't know." We can't deny our own ignorance. So we invent gods.
As something of a digression, the question of polytheism vs monotheism comes into play here. There's often an undercurrent, particularly in Western culture, that monotheism is a step up from polytheism. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what the justification for this is, but it's easy enough to explain from the perspective of human arrogance. If man is another landing on the stairway to heaven, a middle ground between animals and gods, that's good, but it doesn't make man special enough. In monotheism, the next step up from man is the final step. We are one rung below the supreme being. And said supreme being is concerned with our affairs, loves us, is angered by us, communicates with us. Our parents are our models for god. When we are small, our parents know everything, can solve everything. And when we grow up, and have children of our own (as I can tell you first hand), we find out that our parents didn't know everything. We can't do this on our own. The fact that we make our new parental figure the supreme lord and creator of the universe only goes to show 1) how inflated our opinion of ourselves is, that we have to go that far to improve on us, and 2) how unqualified we really feel to handle our own affairs.
Our human affairs are important to us, because we are human. There's nothing wrong with that. But the more we learn of the nature of the universe, the more we realize how little value we have in it. We are utterly insignificant, on a cosmic scale, and that's frightening. God makes this not so. God, in fact, makes it all for us. A nice idea, sure, but what reason do we have to think it's true, other than just wishing really hard that it were? I know that there isn't a god the same way as I know many other laws about the universe. I know that there isn't a god the same way I know that 2+2=4, that objects in motion tend to stay in motion, that physical bodies attract each other, and so on. I am an agnostic, but in the same way as I'm an agnostic that 2+2=4. Until such time as I have reason to believe otherwise, it is fact. If there is a higher power than us, what reason do we have to think that it's the highest power? What does god worship? If we're god's ant farm, what is god in an ant farm for? The universe is a Russian nesting doll, the brane is a computer simulation, the ending of Men in Black, fax mentis, incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum. Name your cliche.
That said, I think my fellow atheists/agnostics who preach a message of tolerance and acceptance are feather bedded. Consider yourself extremely fortunate that you live in an era and a location where you are allowed to believe as you see fit, but understand that this is not reality for the vast, vast majority of non-believers. I cordially invite you to remain silent in regards to subjects of which you are ignorant. Have you ever been spit at in the street for wearing a t-shirt for a "blasphemous" band? Have you ever been physically attacked for your beliefs? Have you ever been subjected to psychological torment because you don't see the logic in a 10,000 year old universe? I have. And I am very far from being in the most disadvantageous position. I have lived in many different areas of the United States, and even in probably the most liberal area in the country, the San Francisco Bay area, I have been yelled and cursed at for not showing proper respect to Jesus Christ. If this has not been your experience, tuck your kids in, pull up the covers and keep your mouth shut. Grown folks are talking.
By way of example, I cite the number of atheists who will blog that people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (two of my personal heroes) should shut up, that they are doing more harm than good. You live a life of comfort because of men like them, who will take a stand and make a difference. It's funny the way accusations of arrogance get leveled at these men, considering the fact that a professing (and presumably not persecuted) non-believer sees fit to tell Christopher Hitchens what he should and should not do. Hitchens was a world class journalist, a fiercely intelligent, intensely educated man who was not content to be an armchair polemicist, who traveled the world and saw first hand what religion is doing to it. Hitchens was, in practice, a remarkably compassionate man who would meet Bible believers on their level. He, as do I, held a great deal of contempt for the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons of the world but he wanted nothing more than to help people live a better life. Fundamentalist Christians who believe the way they do simply because they've never been presented with an alternative were his target audience. And Richard Dawkins, a brilliant biologist and communicator, gets dismissed out of hand by someone who learned about evolution in high school. You learned that because of people like him. Dawkins did not start out as a crusader for atheism, he started out as a zoologist and evolutionary biologist. He became a speaker for atheism because he found his work being maligned and distorted by an extremely powerful political lobby, in order to twist the reality of the world we live in into the box of their bronze age superstitions. But of course, they are the problem.
This is the world we live in. Statistics on atheism are difficult to come by, because of the persecution we are subjected to, but we hover somewhere between two and five percent of the population. And the rest of the world hates us. We are viewed as amoral, disgusting wretches, not fit to hold office or raise children, and I'm sorry, but assimilation is not the answer. Have some courage, stand up for what you believe in, and let the world know that you are not their enemy. If we have to be harsh sometimes, it's because most people think of us as somewhere between a cockroach and that white stuff that accumulates at the side of your mouth when you're really thirsty. If that's not the world you live in, don't attack the people who made it that way. This isn't just what goes on halfway around the world, either. This is my world, this is my experience. This is the United States in 2013. This is a war. And you are on the losing side.
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein.
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