Hi, John 76,
That's a hell of a lot to chew on and I'm not real sure what point or points you're trying to make. The thought that occurs to me is that you've deeply considered a lot of viewpoints of some obviously intelligent people (and I for one share your assessment of Richard Dawkins). I likely haven't gone anywhere near as deep into such considerations of other people's viewpoints, but I think I've gone deeply enough to come to a central conclusion: if I can't rely on reason and logic to provide me with sufficient answers on which to base my daily living, then what can I rely on?
In my personal opinion, which may be completely off-target, but which is at least based on 15+ years of honestly questioning my beliefs and considering alternative realities, if I have a logical explanation for why water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, why would I even consider what some self-proclaimed Goddess of Steam has to say about the subject? Even though I'm not a scientist, I can, with a degree of effort, understand a scientist's explanation about boiling water. Why? Because it's based on observable and repeatable natural phenomena. On the other hand, self-proclaimed Goddesses of Steam, or Gods of Steam, or Sorcerers of Steam, offer no substantive evidence for their claims as to why water boils at a certain temperature. While I can't prove definitively that their claims are erroneous, I can choose to refute them in favor of something that makes sense to me.
I can extrapolate that same rationale to anything else I'm confronted with. Only problem is that for some considerations, logical answers based on the scientific method don't (yet) exist. At that juncture, I'm faced with the option of accepting the "mystical" explanation that comes closest to my own personal preferences, or simply saying, "I don't know".
My choice of the latter is what makes me an agnostic.
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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."
Clarence Darrow |