Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[LadyForCamus]

how could one differentiate between the naturalistic, random design of snowflakes set into motion by a god, and the naturalistic, random design of snowflakes absent a god?

Reasonable question. I don't think we could make that differentiation by looking at the snowflakes. Or by looking at how they're made, or at any of the natural regularities ("laws") which result in the production of snowflakes. 

Offhand I'd say this is where we have to keep in mind the different areas covered by metaphysics and by physics. Science works really well because it limits itself to certain kinds of questions, which are empirical and repeatable. Science can tell us a lot about snowflakes, but it doesn't cover the questions of why such regularities exist in the first place, whether they need something more fundamental for their existence, etc.

I agree. 

I've had people react strongly to the use of the word "metaphysics," but it isn't about ghosts and supernatural stuff, necessarily. The sentence "the data we derive from science tells us about the real world" is a statement of metaphysics -- and one that's particularly easy to subscribe to. 

By definition, though, metaphysical questions can't be settled through empirical repeatable tests. If they could then they'd be science. So we can only look at the way the world seems to be and reason from there. So whether the regularities that give rise to snowflakes depend on a Ground of Being or not is something people just have to use their logic on.

I think I disagree that you can separate science and logic in that way. Logic is grounded in the physical realty we experience. The laws of logic are descriptive of that realty. Consider the law of identity. A, meaning “a thing,” must be identical to itself. Without a physical reality where things exist, there is nothing to describe or identify.  Many of the common logical arguments for god still depend on the truth or likely truth of their premises, and many of those premises are commenting on some purported truth or truths about the physical, detectable universe.