Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[The Grand Nudger]

"Joining the club" and believing in God are really two separate endeavours. If you're not going to join any club, you still need to give good objections to what people present as reasons to believe, and so far I don't think you gave any.
And don't worry, I don't have some delusion of being able to convert crowds of people, or even one person, overnight. I just want to present my case genuinely, and hear genuine, thoughtful objections, not just biased repugnance.

Why would I need objections?  I'm not wasting my time trying to convince you that your silly god isn't real.  You "presented your case" by making some garbage op about how agnosticism was the most dishonest position..and have since shown anyone reading that you don't know jack shit about anything that you're bickering over.

First of all, what you call relativist excuses, are not excuses, nor relativist. No religious person is a relativist, we ascribe to a fixed, unchanging set of commands in scripture. It's your turn to close your eyes and think of other parts in this world when people do things you might hate with every ounce of your soul, but should still hear their reasoning. A vegan shouldn't find meat eaters too repugnant, right?

Back to the thomas jefferson example, let's say you really hate the guy for owning slaves. Does that make his advocacy for democracy, tolerance and individual rights less acceptable? Am I going to count "you out" with regards to his social views ?
And why would you expect a prophet from god to ascribe to your exact personal moral views?

You referred to

1. that only people of his time could judge him 
and
2.  That maybe the little girl liked it.

These are two explicitly relativist and subjectivist excuses.  Fixing your moral system to a magic book does not make you something other than a relativist - it's the actual definition of moral relativism.  

You can count me out with regards to a great many of jefferson's social views.  He was very much a man of his own time.  Incidentally, I do not worship jefferson, any book jefferson wrote, or any god that jefferson may have believed justified his particular ethical points of view. I could save you the time with this fishing expedition into americana. It's an argument from hypocrisy. "Your founding fathers did bad shit too" only works when you acknowledge that your cult founder did bad shit.

I don't expect a prophet from a god to share my moral views.  I don't expect any prophets from god whatsoever, lol.  

What kind of pathetic non-answer is that? You either are completely with me on this point, or you're not. Saying "I accept that you believe this" is dodgy really.

You say mo took a child bride.  Clearly, my objection being to child brides, there's no misapprehension here.

Okay, to sum it all up:

existence of god/gods ...  irrelevant

Correct.  Plenty of things exist.  I don't worship the vast majority of those things, and their moral status isn't addressed by their existence.

Whether Muhammad was moral/righteous as a prophet ... irrelevant

Obviously relevant.  Magic book says he was a warlord who took a child bride.  You concur.  

Our ovewhelming inkling/tendency to believe ... irrelevant

I'm not feeling overwhelmed.  : shrugs :

This is an argument from popularity in and of itself.

Something can't come from nothing .... irrelevant

Correct.  Regardless of whether or not something can come from nothing - I;m a person of strong moral character and conscience.  The problem with your silly religion isn't whether or not you can accept your own beliefs when the apologetic urge bites.  

So .. tell me please, what is relevant?

It's clear that you're dismissing good reasons for belief for the sole reason that you're somewhat familiar with them, and certainly not because you have some good rebuttal. You're not impressed by what the other camp has to offer and that's understandable. Now the key thing is to learn to be impressed and think of these issues in a fresh way, and that's not something I, or anyone, can make you do.
Also, seeing both the issues of the existence of gods AND the morality of the prophets as irrelevant is really closing any possible discussion.

Back to the sense of wonder, yeah, it's a common human perception, I know, and that's why it matters. Common human perceptions are much more compelling, engaging and vivacious than any amount of logical proofs, and you know it, so much that you can feel it.

I have, multiple times.  I am a moral realist.  Your religion is evil.  Your cult founder was a pedophile with a sword.  Magic books position on morally relevant issues is a raging garbage fire.

These may not be problems for you, but they are problems for me. As I keep telling you, assume that your god is real - all of your work is still ahead of you.

As far as common human perceptions..it's a common human perception to see faces on the moon, a related phenomena to god beliefs. You can see how this is just as irrelevant as anything that preceded it, since the problem with your religion, to me anyway..isn't whether or not your god exists. It's all you want to bicker about - but it doesn't matter, and you've given no indication that you're up to the task of proving any deities existence, anyway. I just thought you might be interested to know that this feeling you have, the sense of the numinous, isn't actually a batphone to god.

I don't actually expect you to agree with my moral assessment, and it's unimportant to me that you won't. It's not even all that important to hash out our differences. I'm trying to help you understand something that you've misjudged. We get people here all the time who imagine that the board is full of people who just haven't heard the right gods mouth piece say the right things. People who imagine that they could be that person. You are not that person, and that's not actually how any of this works. At some point, you'll have to make peace with living in a world full of people who do not reject your religion because they are confused about some particular item, but because they have been very well informed, by people like yourself and by your magic book - andon the basis of that accurate understanding, say no thx.

Think about why you aren't a christian or a hindu. It's obviously not on account of how you don't believe in gods. It's obviously not on account of how you don't find arguments for the existence of gods compelling.

[R00tKiT]

Why would I need objections?  I'm not wasting my time trying to convince you that your silly god isn't real.

Huh?
Yeah you don't need objections, you just need to keep shouting.  Matter of fact, you did waste your time, a lot, repeating that my "god is silly", that he '"isn't real" when, instead of repeating it, you could've just given the damn objections.

You referred to

1. that only people of his time could judge him 
and
2.  That maybe the little girl liked it.

These are two explicitly relativist and subjectivist excuses.   Fixing your moral system to a magic book does not make you something other than a relativist - it's the actual definition of moral relativism. 

No, pal. I am referring to these two to fit your moral relativism. As to why you are a moral relativist, whether you like it, admit it or not, it's because no moral statement you made so far differs from the present legal system of your local area. 

Muslims on the other hand still see, rightfully so, that fixing an age for marriage doesn't make sense, that lending money with interest is condemnable usury, that men riding men is an unnatural act, and countless, unchanging radical statements that aren't practically applied anywhere, despite the rest of the world being against them. That's moral absolutism, and we're proud of it, and we don't care if someone think we belong to the middle ages.

I could save you the time with this fishing expedition into americana.  It's an argument from hypocrisy.  "Your founding fathers did bad shit too" only works when you acknowledge that your cult founder did bad shit. 

I'd rather state it this way: your founding fathers practiced stuff that isn't practiced anymore, the same thing goes with the "cult founder". I would've gone with your assessment if we were talking about senseless murder or money laundering, but not with something that was as widespread as slavery, which didn't actually disappear, but only replaced with more subtle forms of subjugation.

Correct.  Plenty of things exist.  I don't worship the vast majority of those things, and their moral status isn't addressed by their existence.

Not many things simultaneously exist and have the three omni properties. Are you really going to consider the god concept and anything else .. the same?
As of the moral status, let's state it in the simplest way : He's God, you're not. 

I'm not feeling overwhelmed.  : shrugs :

This is an argument from popularity in and of itself.

As I said repeatedly : the sense of wonder is not an argument, it's merely a good reason to believe. Now, being wired to believe is actually supported by recent research you easily find on the web. If believing is a basic built-in need in creatures, doesn't it warrant, at least, a good explanation for why it's there at all?

As far as common human perceptions..it's a common human perception to see faces on the moon, a related phenomena to god beliefs.  You can see how this is just as irrelevant as anything that preceded it, since the problem with your religion, to me anyway..isn't whether or not your god exists.  It's all you want to bicker about - but it doesn't matter, and you've given no indication that you're up to the task of proving any deities existence, anyway.  I just thought you might be interested to know that this feeling you have, the sense of the numinous, isn't actually a batphone to god.

You can't really say for something you experience everyday that it's irrelevant. A supposed deity made sure we get impressed by the sunset, by the subtle movements we can make with our hands, by the diversity of animals, etc. That's a faster way to believe in the deity. Not logically rigorous? I don't need to check my stomach with sophisticated toolkit when I'm hungry, I simply go with that feeling without some deeper investigation. Similarly, the layman - and it's the layman that actually matters - needs a faster way to believe in a deity, and proving the kalam version of the cosmological argument with regards to some particular personal god with specific properties will take him forever to even get the terminology straight. One is entitled to require absolute, stone cold, line by line rigor when it comes to figuring out empirical phenomena. In any case, if the layman sincerely worships the wrong kind of deity, no just deity will punish him anywhere, and certainly not the Islamic one.

Metaphysical absolutes are by definition subject to endless doubt, even if not justified, in the end Muslims do take refuge in revelation; our theology at its best gets to good reasons for belief, and a first cause with omni- properties. That's why prophets matter to us, that's why they should exist as corollary to a just deity. You were saying that yourself : even with assuming god, a lot of work is still ahead. A prophet, if exists, was sent to complete this work.

I don't actually expect you to agree with my moral assessment, and it's unimportant to me that you won't.  It's not even all that important to hash out our differences.  I'm trying to help you understand something that you've misjudged.  We get people here all the time who imagine that the board is full of people who just haven't heard the right gods mouth piece say the right things.  People who imagine that they could be that person.  You are not that person, and that's not actually how any of this works.  At some point, you'll have to make peace with living in a world full of people who do not reject your religion because they are confused about some particular item, but because they have been very well informed, by people like yourself and by your magic book - andon the basis of that accurate understanding, say no thx.

Think about why you aren't a christian or a hindu.  It's obviously not on account of how you don't believe in gods.  It's obviously not on account of how you don't find arguments for the existence of gods compelling.

As someone brought up in an Islamic country, being familiar with Islamic literature from a very early age, and more importantly, a native Arabic speaker, I can safely assert that none of you, actually, are anywhere near being informed about Islam.

For a start, you can't possibly know why two billion people are impressed by the Qur'an, or why they regard its language as miraculous , or why they wholeheartedly accept Muhammad as their leader, or why sophisticated businessmen like Abu Bakr' or Uthman believed Muhammad's extraordinary claims when he merely recited words.

Existence of God assumed, the main argument for Islamic belief is , actually, linguistic. That's something very few people in the west, and a lot of Muslims too, simply don't know. More importantly, it's something you should look up.

[LadyForCamus]

Fine, if you say so, but a god who came from no where, no when, and no thing..is very clearlyThat's, actually, the most dishonest answer you can possibly give to your own question. You can't prove this negative answer, you could've stopped at "We don't know",.

Except that we do know, lol.
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/a...flake-made

I didn’t see ”hand-designed by a god” mentioned anywhere in that article. Even if god were the one who set all the natural laws in motion in order to allow for snowflakes to form, it’s still a natural formation that is no mystery to scientists. Do you believe each snowflake was hand designed by a god? Because, that would be a pretty wild claim. I don’t even hear that shit from the hardcore fundies.

The fact that you know how the snowflake came into being, is irrelevant. A supposed god who designed things could've designed them by means of the process of evolution, or by adjusting the laws of physics in such a way to make their existence possible.

Correct, which means the formation of snowflakes is still a blind and natural process, lol. You’re still equivocating.  And, I’ll ask again and maybe a real answer this time: how weak is god that he has to fine tune the entire universe and all of its physical laws, just to get a snowflake to form? 

You're actually anthropomorphising the word design : since people need to use their hands, need manufactures, need planning and time, a logo on the designed product, the same should go for god. And because people don't usually design things through very very thoughtful and long term processes that force these things into existing, they're not designed. And that's a mistake.

It’s your mistake; not mine. Same equivocation fallacy, third time now. You need to look that fallacy up before you try to answer again. Im not going to debate it ad nauseam.

And, we have stuff that looks intelligently designed that is, like a piece of art in a museum.

No, you have stuff that's designed by human beings alone. Why extend your intuitive human definition of design to a deity?

Never mind, I’ll do it for you: 

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logi...uivocation

[LadyForCamus]

@Belaqua

Serious question; you know I respect you. Ignoring the fact that we are still equivocating definitions of the word “design”, 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?

[The Grand Nudger]

Huh?
Yeah you don't need objections, you just need to keep shouting.  Matter of fact, you did waste your time, a lot, repeating that my "god is silly", that he '"isn't real" when, instead of repeating it, you could've just given the damn objections.

Those aren't objections, they're statements of simple facts.  You worship a silly god dreamt up by a 7th century society headed by child raping warlords.

My objection, is that your religion is moral detritus on account of this.

No, pal. I am referring to these two to fit your moral relativism. As to why you are a moral relativist, whether you like it, admit it or not, it's because no moral statement you made so far differs from the present legal system of your local area. 

You should just save yourself the trouble and look these terms up.

Muslims on the other hand still see, rightfully so, that fixing an age for marriage doesn't make sense, that lending money with interest is condemnable usury, that men riding men is an unnatural act, and countless, unchanging radical statements that aren't practically applied anywhere, despite the rest of the world being against them. That's moral absolutism, and we're proud of it, and we don't care if someone think we belong to the middle ages.

Moral absolutism is not equivalent to moral realism.  I accept that you believe what you do about child brides.  Since you do believe this thing about child brides, and since I have an objection to child brides - there's no misapprehension here.

It is because of this..not because I'm unclear on this, that I cannot join your club.  

I'd rather state it this way: your founding fathers practiced stuff that isn't practiced anymore, the same thing goes with the "cult founder". I would've gone with your assessment if we were talking about senseless murder or money laundering, but not with something that was as widespread as slavery, which didn't actually disappear, but only replaced with more subtle forms of subjugation.

Jesus christ..... spare me, the boards, and yourself any urge you feel to engage in slavery apologism.  

Here again I see that this is something that you believe, and because of this....not because I'm unclear on this, I cannot join your club.

Not many things simultaneously exist and have the three omni properties. Are you really going to consider the god concept and anything else .. the same?
As of the moral status, let's state it in the simplest way : He's God, you're not. 

Your silly god could have eleventy-two omni properties or none.  No number of omni properties is a problem for me.  Yes, if there were a god..it would be a god, and I would not be a god.  That's not an issue of disagreement.  So what if it's a god?  The god your magic book describes is an evil god.  

I have no interest in worshiping an evil god.  Do you?

As I said repeatedly : the sense of wonder is not an argument, it's merely a good reason to believe. Now, being wired to believe is actually supported by recent research you easily find on the web. If believing is a basic built-in need in creatures, doesn't it warrant, at least, a good explanation for why it's there at all?

A good reason to believe in what...nutter?  It's a good reason to believe that people have common experiences.  Beyond that, have fun....but it's not like it's going to matter to me.....

You can't really say for something you experience everyday that it's irrelevant. A supposed deity made sure we get impressed by the sunset, by the subtle movements we can make with our hands, by the diversity of animals, etc. That's a faster way to believe in the deity. Not logically rigorous? I don't need to check my stomach with sophisticated toolkit when I'm hungry, I simply go with that feeling without some deeper investigation. Similarly, the layman - and it's the layman that actually matters - needs a faster way to believe in a deity, and proving the kalam version of the cosmological argument with regards to some particular personal god with specific properties will take him forever to even get the terminology straight. One is entitled to require absolute, stone cold, line by line rigor when it comes to figuring out empirical phenomena. In any case, if the layman sincerely worships the wrong kind of deity, no just deity will punish him anywhere, and certainly not the Islamic one.

If you say so.  I guess people get to tell god what to do nowadays.  :  shrugs  :

Metaphysical absolutes are by definition subject to endless doubt, even if not justified, in the end Muslims do take refuge in revelation; our theology at its best gets to good reasons for belief, and a first cause with omni- properties. That's why prophets matter to us, that's why they should exist as corollary to a just deity. You were saying that yourself : even with assuming god, a lot of work is still ahead. A prophet, if exists, was sent to complete this work.

-and yet it remains incomplete.  Tell me more about the incompetence of the "prophet". 

As someone brought up in an Islamic country, being familiar with Islamic literature from a very early age, and more importantly, a native Arabic speaker, I can safely assert that none of you, actually, are anywhere near being informed about Islam.

For a start, you can't possibly know why two billion people are impressed by the Qur'an, or why they regard its language as miraculous , or why they wholeheartedly accept Muhammad as their leader, or why sophisticated businessmen like Abu Bakr' or Uthman believed Muhammad's extraordinary claims when he merely recited words.

Existence of God assumed, the main argument for Islamic belief is , actually, linguistic. That's something very few people in the west, and a lot of Muslims too, simply don't know. More importantly, it's something you should look up.

Why do you think it would matter to me how many people believed in your fairy tales?  

Really work that out.

You're still trying to argue with me about whether or not god exists. Why? Have I been unclear?

[Belacqua]

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'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.

[Belacqua]

I would say randomness is subjective to us, as human beings. Randomness can simply be our misunderstanding of deeper - or unknowable? - reasons of why some laws appear to describe absolute randomness - I don't think that's actually the case, but let's push the definitions to their limits -.

Also the fact that we understand the system better than we did a few centuries ago, shouldn't make the reasons we believed in the most superior deity, obsolete. Science already hit a plateau in very ambitious topics [the uncertainty principle, Gödel's incompleteness theorems in mathematics, etc] . 

Yes, this makes sense to me. Things that seem random or inexplicable now may be explained in the future, or may just be beyond what humans are capable of understanding. 

There's a speech somewhere on YouTube in which Noam Chomsky addresses the limits of human understanding. He points to studies with rats in mazes, in which the rats can solve fairly complicated math problems in order to get through the maze, but apparently are incapable of solving a maze based on prime numbers. Primes are just beyond rat understanding. And though people understand somewhat more than rats, it seems very likely that there are all kinds of things beyond what our brains can handle. 

It's becoming increasingly clear that our scientific method will remain absolutely silent on the big questions, and that we should seriously reconsider our opinion about theology, arguing from scripture, etc. Because they are all we have.

The first part of this seems certain to me. Science will never and can never address certain things that humans need. I was raised without religion, so I don't necessarily think that we should turn to theology when we ponder the non-science questions. Still, the fact that religion has been a fundamental part of the human psyche for all of history means that I'm not one of those people who just want to toss it all. 

I think any religious theologian you can look up will essentially argue for a personal God. To me, a personal god simply means a god who actually communicated with people, or a handful of people, in a language they understand, and gave very specific instructions about how to live their lives for the promise of some real happiness, eternal blissfulness, etc.

This is the part I have to work on. For the most part I have focused my studies on Neoplatonic tradition, in which the One or the Ideal isn't seen as personal in the way that the monotheistic religions see it. It's not clear to me yet how Neoplatonic Christians (e.g. Pseudo-Dionysius) reconcile eternal impassibility with personhood. I'm looking forward to learning more.

If we agree that any entity can't give what it doesn't have

If I'm understanding you right, this is an Aristotelian concept, and so perhaps something I can get a handle on. To pass  a quality on to different things, the causal force must possess that quality. 

Most of I read about theology in favor of Islam is essentially in Arabic. I think however that any content you can find by the so called Hamza Tzortzis, can be useful, including his book. He does take the time to argue for everything up to the personal god of Islam

And there is yet another part of the big wide world of which I am completely ignorant. I have never read a single word of Muslim theology, except insofar as Avicenna or Averroes relates to Christian thought. So much to learn.....

[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.

[Belacqua]

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.

I didn't mean to say that in thinking carefully about the world we can separate science and logic. We use them together, though a given case may demand more of one than the other. 

A paradigm case is maybe Zeno's logical arguments as to why motion is impossible. Though the conclusions are obviously false -- because motion happens -- it's surprisingly hard to show why his logic is bad. Demonstrating through logic that Zeno is wrong led Aristotle to develop his whole system of act and potency, which has ever since affected the way we think about both theology and science. 

Another way to approach it might be to think about math as a form of logic. It seems likely that math began for purely practical reasons in the real world. (If your tribe has 34 members, and consumes one wooly mammoth per month, how many mammoths do we need to make it to spring, assuming that as always one third of the tribe will die from disease during the winter?) But the logical development of math has led to negative, irrational, and imaginary numbers, which may have very little relevance to the material world. Math tells us that there are infinities of different sizes, which seems pretty unrelated to any mammoth problem I can think of. 

Natural theology works entirely as you say: it begins with purported truth about the world as we see it, and works from there. If people's logic seems wrong to us, then we either point to the empirical world as a rebuttal, or show that the logic is wrong. 

But our knowledge of the empirical world is often flawed. And our logic is often wrong as well. So it's an ongoing problem to use them in dialectic to improve out thinking.

[Objectivist]

Hey there,

Non religious people tend to overly use words without thinking about them, just like many religious people do, only in a much more dishonest manner.

Let's take the motto "I believe in science" for example, which is, for most skeptics, a euphemism for "I don't believe in anything any religion claims". The latter declaration already contains a mistake since nobody exhausted all the religious claims and ensured that they're fake. Let's remember that atheists are perfectly fine with ruling out entire religions with guesswork and false stereotypes.

Fancy words like science, reason, etc. refer to a very simple idea : we struggle very hard to figure out how things work around us. We invented mathematics and fancy abstract concepts for the sole purpose of getting our thoughts straight. When our mathematics became good enough we were finally able to have a better intuition of the universe. What should be kept in mind here is that we didn't create anything, we adapted to an a priori existence, all our attempts in science are a posteriori explanations that we try to fit to what we see around us. It's easy to imagine a very clever alien figuring out our entire "glories" of science in a couple of hours, then coming with a working theory of everything in the next, but this very alien is clever enough not to mess with fundamentally different questions like a meaning of his existence , or disregard revelation without looking at it hard enough.

So the purpose of science is attempts to figure out a posteriori how stuff works. Religion is about wondering why there is an a priori to discover in the first place. These are two entirely distinct compartments. Huge advancements in one don't negate the importance of the other.

That's why people repeating the aforementioned motto are fundamentally dishonest, they equivocate and mix these two very different aspects of reality.

It's not hard to make a case that we will never access any kind of ultimate reality, we already know that we cannot ever predict a physical quanity of a particle with certainty [Uncertainty principle]. Yeah : predicting certainly anything about one particle anywhere in the universe is already inaccessible to us forever.

And let's not forget that it took us 1700+ years to prove pi is irrational. And some still say : I'm open minded about discovering God in the future .

The only honest position is actually to take one of the two extremes. Saying that you're open to science discovering god is a grave misunderstanding of both science and religion.

It's only dishonest if one knows there is no god but claims to be agnostic.  I was once an agnostic theist.  I didn't know if there was a god but I wanted there to be and I believed there was (for really bad reasons).  I was being honest.  I then stopped believing that there was a god even though I wasn't sure there wasn't one.  I was an agnostic atheist.  I was being honest.  Then after much study and thought I became convinced that there was no god and there never could be.  Rather than be dishonest and say I was an agnostic atheist because people wouldn't like it much if I said I was a hard atheist, I chose to be honest and stated that I was a strong atheist, after all I don't care what people think of me.  I'm going, to be honest, no matter who doesn't approve.  So you see, at no point in my life have I been dishonest with regard to this issue.