Skepticologist

The bible says that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In reality, it's abdication of an individual's abililty to logically grapple with things he or she can't understand, and the courage to admit that it can't be understood.

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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

Silence Dogood

From your above anathematization may I conclude that you yourself are completely devoid of faith?

Vinterland

This is the agnostic forum, so it's unlikely you'll get many responses from strong-atheists here.

The same can be said of the people who deny the existence of God: strong-atheists, fort I've not seen any reason to believe them either.

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And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment."
—Gibran Khalil Gibran, “The Greater Sea.”

Skepticologist

No, you may not. I have a great amount of faith in things that have been supported by science or other logical systems, as well as in things that I've personally observed to be congruent and consistent over time.

I am, however, completely devoid of the kind of faith that requires me to abandon logic and reason and embrace some or other belief system simply because it's convenient or because I have personal reasons for wanting to believe in it.

__________________
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

to_hobbes

Skepticologist, you're a genius!

I would also say that Agnosticism is a fundamentally scientific belief system. Science, by it's very definition, does not accept anything to be true without experimental evidence. Even what is a "scientific fact" is actually not provable -- science makes no assertions, other than what is asserted may only be disproved, never proven. For example, newtonian physics used to be a great idea, and many people still use it today because it is relatively simple and still accurate in everyday life situations. But it was disproved by Einstein.

So how can Science be wrong if it technically doesn't make any assertions to begin with? The same goes for agnosticism. You could say that agnostics assert that "we don't know", but I would say that is not an assertion, that is the opposite of an assertion.