I am keeping my options open, however. I do respect your honesty and conviction. There is still room for a Christian God in my Agnosticism, however improbable. To clarify my personal position, this is not a social convenience for me to mask atheism. I truly believe that it is impossible to determine the nature of our existance given all of our limitations (scope, observation, reproduceability (sp?), et al.) I do not believe it is a waste of time to ponder or even debate (obviously), but I doubt that there will ever be a satisfactory conclusion, so most times, I choose not to debate. I am fascinated by the work of science. I make my living on computers. I read Scientific American, POPSCI, and POPMech for pleasure. I am almost giddy that we are on Mars finding out some damned real answers. I am absolutely amazed by the genius of the technology that put us there. I am definately not anti-science or progress. I am just a die hard skeptic. It seems wise to remember things like the Titanic et al when humankind starts feeling cocky.

Certain events in my life have made me think that our five senses aren't enough to comprehend the scope of even this planet. Shit, look at B.F. Skinner. All he set out to do was to insist on scientific method in Psychology. He spent most of the rest of his life trying to distance himself, one huge mea culpa (one he didn't need to make). I view all of modern science as I view Skinner. If you try to limit your scope only to what is measurable, quantifiable and reproduceable you may be able to predict certain behaviors but it, in no way, gives any understanding of the complexity of conciousness nor how it came into being. Nor it's true purpose or potential. Etc.

Right now, as we reverse engineer the human genome, we may be able to reproduce some aspects, but we are not the originators nor do we have much understanding of why or how. We are the Microsoft Engineers in this equation. :-O My fear is that we will duplicate MS's work with similar results. The world needs true agnostics (or skeptics or philosophers) to keep the rest of the world in line. YMMV.