Why Agnosticism?

[Admiral Ackbar]

Read an interesting argument regarding the atheist/faith debate recently. It goes something like this:

- Universal negative requires absolute knowledge
- Universal positive does not require absolute knowledge

Atheists believe that there is no god and to make this claim they must be omniscient, i.e. all knowing. If they are not omniscient they are basing their belief on a certain degree of faith. Whereas theists do not have to be omniscient to know if god exists since they would only need to scour the universe up to the point where they actually discovered a god.

So essentially, the atheist requires more faith than the theist.

Now, I think there's a fundamental flaw with the argument, however, I'm not completely sure. I mean, to me it seems like the argument would only work under the pretence that there is a god to be found. If there were no god the theist would have to continue their search until they, too, had reached absolute omniscience.

Gah, I can't articulate what I mean because I'm not even sure what I mean. I just know that in my head it seems flawed in some way.