A Simi-Agnostic Atheist Manifesto

Before you read this: if you have an allergy to stupidity don't read this.
"Journalist" Ron Rosenbaum has written an article for Slate Magazien called An Agnostic Manifesto. In the article he takes the agnostic fence sitting to its illogical conclusion. He has taken his misunderstanding of agnosticism, and mixed it with the holier than thou attitude of a religious fundamentalist.

He demonstrates his ignorance in his lack of understanding of the meanings of the words "theism", "atheism", "agnosticism", "belief" and "certainty".
Don't believe me, read it your self.

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Let's get one thing straight: Agnosticism is not some kind of weak-tea atheism. Agnosticism is not atheism or theism.

The only thing he gets right.

It is radical skepticism, doubt in the possibility of certainty, opposition to the unwarranted certainties that atheism and theism offer. Agnostics have mostly been depicted as doubters of religious belief, but recently, with the rise of the "New Atheism"—the high-profile denunciations of religion in best-sellers from scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, and polemicists, such as my colleague Christopher Hitchens—I believe it's important to define a distinct identity for agnosticism, to hold it apart from the certitudes of both theism and atheism.

Wrong! Agnosticism isn't "radical skepticism" (that would be post modernism). Atheism doesn't provide "certainties", Atheism is just the lack of a belief in a god or gods. Atheism isn't a single belief system, it is a spectrum of belief ranging from agnostic atheism to strong atheism.
Belief itself doesn't necessarily entail certainty. You can believe something with out being certain of it.
Ron Rosenbaum relay shows his lack of research here; In the God Delusion Richard Dawkins created what has been dubbed the Dawkins scale. It is a scale from 1 to 7 with 1 being absolute certainty that a god exists and 7 being absolute certainty that a god does not exist, Dawkins placed him self at 6

Indeed agnostics see atheism as "a theism"—as much a faith-based creed as the most orthodox of the religious variety.

Only to the ignorant fence sitter post modernists like him.

the certainty that they [atheists] can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence. [...] Faced with the fundamental question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing.

Atheism isn't science, atheism isn't based on science, atheism is simply the lack of a belief. You can be an atheist and think that science is utter bullshit and their are those that do.
"create itself from nothing." No scientist has ever said that! The only people who have said such things are people strawmaning science which is what he is doing; strawmaning science to attack a strawman of atheism.

Recently scientists have tried to answer it with theories of "multiverses" and "vacuums filled with quantum potentialities," none of which strikes me as persuasive.
Argument from
Argument from incredulity! Just because he doesn't find it "persuasive" it is automatically false?

Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing.

Why would there be nothing rather than something? Neither questions make any sense! Thats like asking "what if purple was blue?"

No more! Read the rest your self if you have the stomach for it. Its a bunch of logical fallacies and straw men

This guy is a post modernist idiot. Agnosticism is not a middle ground, it is a separate issue. Where theism/atheism deal with belief, gnosticism/agnosticism deals with knowledge. "Is the existence of a god or gods knowable?" Thats the question gnosticism/agnosticism deals with, theism/atheism deals with the question "Do you believe a god or gods exist?"
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