I am not “agnostic” about the celestial teapot, I am atheist about it, because I think there are many positive evidences against its existence (teapot are products stemming only from human beings, it is impossible for them to be formed naturally, and no man has even been so far in the space).
So, contrarily to what Russel affirmed, it is quite possible to prove that there exists no such entity, and this is the ground why most people don’t believe in it, and not merely because of the absence of evidences.
However, I am agnostic about the existence of a plastic teapot floating right now 100 km away from new York, I have clearly no evidence, but it may well have fallen out of a ship and arrived at precisely this place.

I really think atheists have to provide positive grounds for their belief, merely pointing out to the absence of evidences does not suffice, for it only leads to agnosticism by itself.
Now, I know many very clever folks who agree with that and have written a lot of stuff in order to disprove the existence of God as I have just disproved the existence of the celestial teapot.
For example, Michael Martin:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/#atheism

Furthermore, with such “subjective” subjects outside the realm of empirical science, they could nto be proven _or disproven_ via empirical science — no verification _either way_ would seem possible. It would seem then that from a viewpoint of rock-solid, 100% pure empiricism, one would have to take an “agnostic” position on these issues: simply “I don’t know” (and in this case, perhaps added “and there is no way to know”.). The “atheism of the baby” is sort of this way, as well, he/she does not know or have any opinions on the matter, he/she doesn’t even know what the term “God” means. If you call this position an “atheism”, go ahead. But if the type of “atheism” you claim to follow is that God has been proven not to exist, how does that jive with your claim these things to be fundamentally outside the realm of science and emiprical verification: how can one verify God does _not_ exist any more than one can verify God _does_ exist?

Allow me to elaborate on what I mean when I say that atheism is the default position: we are all born atheists. No one believes in any sort of God when they first come into this world. People are driven to believe in God through some process of linguistic enculturation. Now granted, I guess it is possible that it is possible to have some sort of pre-linguistic understanding of a “higher power” through some sort of mystical experience, but I highly doubt that this is the norm. I imagine that for most people, they believe in God because the cultural norms and conceptual structures that emerge from the interaction of language and society drive them to do so.

I agree that spiritual ideas are “outside” of the realm of reason and science, but that is precisely why one should strive to eradicate them from your conceptual vocabulary. While sure, it is all well and good to have some sort of pre-ontological intuition of some transcendent metaphysical plane, but once you start trying to put that into the language of “gods” or “deities”, then you run smack into irrationalism, which I think should be avoided in the 21st century.

So, the point of not respecting the belief in the teapot is that it fosters a sense of metaphysical parsimony. Occam’s Razor should apply to all aspects of your conceptual structures, not just the “reasonable” ones. Thou shalt not multiple metaphysical entities beyond necessary, and as far as I am concerned, there are *no* necessary metaphysical entities for human life.

And I agree that we should, for pragmatic purposes, engage in the judgment of the actions of people, but I think believing in a God is a kind of action. It is an action of the mind, driven by irrational thought processes. I don’t think there is anything wrong or unpragmatic about judging people for how rational their conceptual structures are.

I’d like to get back to the idea of judging a spiritual, or metaphysical idea, based on reason. I think it is perfectly justifiable to judge a metaphysical belief through reason. Either there are good reasons for believing in something or there are bad reasons. Sure, there is this huge subjective dimension to spiritual/metaphysical beliefs, but by definition, believing in something for purely subjective reasons is irrational, and shouldn’t be sugarcoated as anything else. As a matter of fact I think it is cognitively unhealthy to paint subjective thought processes “just as legitimate” as rationalistic or scientific ones. One is epistemologically superior than the other because one is verifiable and the other isn’t.

Now I am not saying there is anything *wrong* with having irrational belief structures, but I do think that ultimately it is a hindrance to the intellectual progression of humanity. Reason has a long, long track record of *working* for society. What good has irrationality ever done that couldn’t have been done just as well through rational means? Has there ever been any moral acts done by believers that couldn’t have been done by non-believers? I think those are important questions.

Again, thanks for the comment.

By reasons standards, sure, these ideas seem wrong. But why the jump into respect? It seems to me that this debate can only be driven by the nature of the relationship between the atheist and the deist. I think in this sort of debate, it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, atheism is as unproven as deism. Really both of these terms are linguistic approximations of reality, failing to capture the delicate beauty of the belief systems the represent.

And that is why I say, forget this business about respecting or disrespecting a belief. Beliefs are ultimately subjective no matter the content, being based within the agent and dedicated to explaining external. And we both know science and reason are far from metaphysically infallible.

I say, suspend your disbelief when discussing God, or stay away from the discussion entirely. What’s the point in ‘not respecting’ the teapot belief when you can instead try to understand the innate humaneness. I think more of this, and less of the other, will result in happier more united individuals who are capable of holding two seemingly contradictory terms (God and No God) for example as equally valid viewpoints.

Tao anyone?

I know this isn’t far off from what you are arguing, but for the sake of pragmatics, I really think we’re better off suspending our judgment of gods, and rather engaging in judgment of the actions of people.

I accept that I am between disbelief and conviction as Hume correctly suggests.

Religion and rational are not bedfellows. Religion appeals to the emotive centres of well being and gives purpose to “some”.

Religion is more like a glue that binds people into communities of belief, trying to define the undefinable.

I respect the others religion mainly because we are equally deluded and comfortable in our own. We are therefore the same.

Thanks for the discourse!

I respect the other person because like me he has his flaws.

Perfection some say is god.

I think where we disagree is on the point about whether or not there are “legitimate reasons” for believing in God. While I think there are many “reasons” to believe in God, I think that most of them are subjective and irrational. So the quesiton at hand hinges upon whether you think it is “legitimate” to belief in something that there is no evidence for based on subjective reasoning. I do not think it is legitimate, and thus I don’t think it would be intellectually honest for me, as an atheist, to come out and “respect” the beliefs of believers. I would only respect someone’s beliefs if they were able to spell out why they held that particular belief and the reasons they give are logical and rational.

And also, it doesn’t matter whether there is a knock-down argument against the existence of God. What matters is that atheism towards gods is the default position and should it not be seen as rational to stick with the default, barring exceptional evidence or philosophical argument otherwise? To my knowledge, there are no good philosophical arguments for God, nor is there any physical evidence for his existence, so I stand by my statement that it is irrational to hold a belief in any supernatural deity, and it isn’t legitimate nor worthy of respect to hold onto a belief in the supernatural.

The only sort of belief in God that I think is worthy of respect is some kind of Spinoza-esque, pantheistic equivalence of God with Nature. Spinoza showed a deep vision that denies the anthropomorphic version of God and maintains a naturalistic determinism. So while it is still more parsimonious to just leave the word “God” out of the picture and look at the holistic phenomena of the world as worthy of awe, I can respect the weighty philosophical systems that take Nature seriously, as opposed to the flimsy monotheistic “ruler-in-heaven” systems common to most Christians. I think it is interesting that a lot of thinkers, including Berkeley, considered Spinoza to be an atheist because of how naturalistic his system was.