Therefore I feel that it is somewhat dishonest to describe myself as an agnostic when I'm sure that I'll be misunderstood to be waffling on the question of God's (non)existence.
Conversely it irritates me to see fundamentalist Christians who publically claim to be agnostics simply because they think that that is a better position to argue from. Be accurate, even when it is inconvenient for you.
Now to the response that you gave of the Anthropic Principle. It misses exactly what [link|http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=5r9e9a%24tq2%241%40dartvax.dartmouth.edu&rnum=2|my post] said is often missed. When factoring in the results of an observation, how surprised we are at the thing observed is irrelevant to any conclusions. What matters in drawing conclusions are ratios of probabilities. Quoting from my article:
First of all only half of the argument that needs to be presented has been attempted here. The side that has been totally ignored is how likely it is a priori that there is a designer, who is interested in creating intelligent life, who would actually do it by designing a universe like this, and who is capable of doing it. Given that the person presenting the argument believes that there is such a designer (indeed the individual often believes that they know what the designer is like) this oversight is understandable. However from the point of view of an atheist (such as myself) this is a major flaw since, to me, the assumption of an intelligent God capable of creating the universe, is a more unlikely thing (a priori) than the observed universe...
So no, the interpretation of the Anthropic Principle is far from being as simple as many would have it. But neither is it as trivially rejected as your article would have it.
Furthermore the effect of the Anthropic Principle, fully analyzed, is to cause any person who is already convinced to become further convinced of their original position. It therefore is a great way to sound convincing to your own ears while completely missing the other person.
Which is an important point that you don't often hear from anyone.
Cheers,
Ben