Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[R00tKiT]

I have a perfectly rational basis for my morality, based on the objective facts of the universe, and the goal of well being.

Okay. Based on your so called rational basis, what makes a human life more worth it than that of a bacteria's?

We all know people who will surely be more unsettled by witnessing animals hurt/tortured than humans torturing each other. But they all agree that they're more worth to continue to exist than any other life. And if it all comes down to the survival instinct, that is, each and every person should simply avoid his extinction with all he has, then the problem of eugenics and basing morality on darwinin stuff kicks in, and clearly nobody accepts that.

Part of the problem is the whole New Atheist thing. Dawkins and Hitchens and those guys began with the a priori belief that theology must be so stupid that you don't have to know anything about it to criticize it. They were not bothered by the fact that their books contain numerous factual errors, and neither were their fans. We're well into the second generation of such thinking by now. 

So there's a disconnect between people who want to exchange reasons and talk about things, and people who feel it's fine just to vent.

And neither Dawkins nor Hitchens are professional philosophers. That partly explains why they either address the weakest form of a standard argument, or strawman directly a particular religion, like Hitchens thinking that God in Islam condemns people for "thought crimes", but it is well known that the verse mentioning that[2:284] was abrogated by the following verses [2:285/286]. The abrogated verse then simply says that God knows what people think about, but it's made clear He won't judge them on that unless they act upon it. 

This is basic Qur'an stuff known to any Muslim. But Hitchens didn't know about it, and more importantly, he didn't bother getting his stories about Islam straight.

Another widespread strawman they usually present is that non Muslims necessarily go to Hell according to the Islamic doctrine. This is absolutely false, only those who rejected Islam while being convinced of its truth/high likelihood are the ones who deserve any kind of hereafter punishment.

The word kafirun' is wrongly translated into disbelievers in all major translations of the Qur'an. This is a huge mistake, it's almost a dishonest translation, the word kufr' is much more than mere disbelief, it literaly means knowingly denying truth.

While it is true, that this is a stronger statement than I have previously read by Hawking, he is not making a scientific claim. You do notice the phrase "for me", right? He is stating an opinion based on his scientific knowledge.

And no, he is not making "retarded, nonsensical shit about god", his position is based on the lack of: demonstrable evidence, reasoned argument, and, valid and sound logic to support the claim a god exists.

His position/opinion is ridiculous, and you really should try and acknowledge that. Also, he wrote a book about it, it's not like he said that in a Tweet or something, so it does count, as such, as evidence that he is a very poor theologian.