According to my view of things, no one knows the true nature of reality. Or more accurately, no one knows everything. Therefore in order to be 100 percent certain there is no supreme being, you'd have to know everything. but then if you did know everything, you'd be a god. I think Baltar from the new Battlestar Galactica said something similar.

Yes, you do John. You just don't know it yet. You're putting to much into the phrase "Absence of evidence *IS* evidence of absence".
It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. "Evidence" is not considered proof. "Absence" is absence.

We don't live in 1st century anymore. Theists have made the claim for god for several millennia now. They have turned up no evidence to support their case that can stand up to scrutiny.

"Germs" - nobody knew about germs so nobody was was looking for germs so nobody cared about germs. Until there was a discovery that could provide the evidence to back it up. This is not very comparable to god but okay. Consider what folks in the 1st century believed when one got sick. All kinds of crazy stuff. usually from god or some form of Satan.

I totally disagree with you that the phrase cannot change. It can. As soon as the evidence shows up. When god comes down from heaven to endorse a particular religion, more specifically its denomination. Then chooses a political party then, we will certainly have something interesting to talk about.

I've had an idea I've been trying to develope for a while. It's the notion of what if civilization evolved without the "religious gene."

Steve Mason said this:

"Human Beings are hard wired to believe. In fact, the more you annoy them with reason the more their faith will grow. An otherwise obvious fact will become nothing but a test of their faith - the work of the devil. Show a Creationist a fossil and he'll tell you Satan planted it to mislead the gullible."

Suppose humans didn't have this characteristic, that there was no tendancy to conclude that the valcano erupted because the gods were angry. It just erupted.

This hypothetical civilization would develope quickly, and have a love of logic and rational thought. They would not have the notion of God.

So the question is:
Is this civilization Athiestic or Agnostic?

Footnote: www.hevanet.com/kort/2006/MASON36.HTM

I don't think I claim to withold judgement on the existence of a God or gods, devils, demons, etc., because *nothing* can be absolutely known. To claim so would seem to be a species of absolute knowledge claiming, which I generally avoid and take issue with. The existence of Galactus the Eater of Worlds is so improbable as to be easy for me to dismiss, and the fact that neither you nor I cannot absolutely prove his existence or non-existence does not immediately connect to every other judgement I make about anything else in the universe...I don't think it does, anyway.

As I have written in this Tribe before: when I stub my toe, it hurts. I think and say that it hurts because I have learned a concept of "pain", the unpleasant feeling associated with such an event as a toe stubbing. I presume that I had to learn what pain means from other humans, authority figures that I was lucky enough to have watching out for me, who taught me what pain is for, how it is useful for diagnosing injuries, etc.

Some of these same authority figures sent me to the Roman Catholic church, long ago in my increasingly distant childhood, where i was told that there is a God, that his son is Jesus, he died for our sins, etc. Pretty much every claim of said church that I can think of I have come to doubt to such an extreme that I could be called, by someone who doesn't know me intimately, an athesit. I think it is so unlikely that a benevolent creator such as the God described to me in the church exists...

Being an English major, a 2nd generation Puerto Rican American, etc...to make a long story short, I like to think that I'm the type of guy who likes to know about the particular meaning of words, especially when it comes to words used to describe himself. The term "agnostic" has traditionally felt like the best descriptive noun for my state of mind at most any given moment, specifically because I think it embraces something you referred to: the absurd. I think that my life is filled with things that cannot be easily explained or rationalized-away. The death of my mother from breast cancer is one example of this (a healthy person struck down before age 40, a person who ate well, exercised, and died of a preventable disease regardless), and in truth this is the example that I refer to the most...I may have abstractly and intellectually had a problem with a belief in a benevolent creator before her demise, but afterward the idea of the Christian god seemed absurd. it was right around this time that I first read _The Stranger_ and _Siddhartha_...both of these books opened a door in my head, so to speak, to a frame of mind in which I felt that I could embrace the idea that, in my life, some things are just not going to make sense to me, and that it is perhaps a waste of my time and energy to try to force them to make sense. There is no "good reason" for why my mother died at age 39. I don't think this was part of any God's plan...it may be that my maternal family has kept secret, over decades or centuries, a secret about cancer risks from within, or that my mom was just in the "wrong place at the wrong time", so to speak...

But, of course, I'm rambling a bit...life, as I experience it, is filled with absurdity. When I look at the news, when I look at the wars we fight, when I think about why we fight them I am not sure of what to make of it. I don't clearly see who the "good" and "bad" guys are. I work in non-profit cancer prevention research (admittedly not as an oncologist or statistician or anything...I work with such people, answering email for them, making training videos, etc.) and I think about, at length, why humans research such things at all, why we give a damn about wanting to keep people from suffering...we perform research not knowing what's around the corner at all, without instant gratification in re: results from our studies, etc. The people I work with and for are interested in things that can be proven, points that can be proven in the context of science generally and in terms of cancer research particularly.

At the end of the day I withold judgement re: religions, supernormal/supernatural beings, aliens, etc., because such things have so little to do with my day-to-day life that it's just not worth scheduling my day around them...and yet, paradoxically enough, I am curious about SETI's research, and I am able to have meaningful relationships and conversations with people who actually believe in God(s), Fate, etc. The behavior and beliefs of much of humanity seems absurd and nonsensical, to me, and I guess that means that I don't have too much of a problem with some internal absurdity. You can't prove to me that there is no God, or Kali, or Odin, and you can't prove to me that there must be any such beings. This, in my humble opinion, does not mean that thinking that my toe hurts when I stub it is an absurdity. It hurts...I find it difficult to conclude otherwise when it occurs. ;)

<"Does it matter whether you claim to be agnostic or atheist- not at all as far as I can tell. The differences in our viewpoints are miniscule and unimportant. Let's go have a beer. .. ">

Wow Rene, I'm not used to agreeing with you on anything. Cheers, mate!