You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do. ~Norman Juster

Clarence Darrow once remarked, “I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure.” Is having faith ignorant? Or are atheists and agnostics the true hypocrites, choosing to question gods simply based on the fact that there is not enough evidence to prove it?

True, many people believe in God merely because their teachers and parents have told them that he exists. And most likely the parents and teachers believe in God due to what their parents and teachers told them as children. Now this is not to say that we should always refuse to believe simply because of authority. The sharing of knowledge is an interactive social phenomenon and strongly depends on evidence. And if one were to believe solely based on what others have told them to believe, then yes, I suppose religion could be considered ignorance. It is up to us, however, as cogent beings to question all that we are told—to go out and test the theories which have been told; then and only then can we be sure that what we’ve been told is now something that we can firmly believe in.

When it comes to religion, though, it’s a bit more complicated. It’s not like we can go out and be introduced to the god that we are simply being told to have faith in.

I suppose agnostics are acceptable in the fact that they refuse to believe one way or the other--they simply accept that they do not now, and cannot know.

But when agnostics are denying that there is a not a god based on the fact that there is not enough evidence to prove it, how do they fight the fact that there isn’t enough evidence to disprove it either?

When it comes down to it, I guess it isn't necessarily what you personally believe, but that you are open to all views. To be a truly reasonable, persuasive critic of religion, one must have a vast knowledge of the topic at hand. And, ultimately, one must accept that "The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing" (Joseph Addison)--we are only human and we will never have all the answers...and that's the one thing we can ever be fully sure of.