Hi,

this little graph may help you clarify the situation, [link]

The vast majority of atheists I have met are agnostic atheists...interestingly most theist I have met are also agnostic theists (they accept they can't know for sure, they chose to believe). I know of very few gnostic theist or atheist.

A case could be made that for _specific_ gods from _specific_ religions (Baal, Elohim, Zeus, Jupiter), we find many gnostic atheist (even among people who are otherwise theists), since those gods/religion make specific claims that can be falsified. But when it comes to a generic form of deism, I have met extraordinarily few people claiming to be gnostic. However, gnostics tend to be an annoyingly vocal and obnoxious breed, on both sides of the argument.

VE.

When the people try to force those beliefs on others as if they're fact, then it becomes our business.

Intelligent design is nothing _but_ a bunch of religious malarkey. When asked this specific question, here is what the US courts found:

A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants' protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity.

The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism.

The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.

You should read [link] in all its details, it is a damning indictment of ID as a movement, and how thinly veiled of a religous malarkey it is.

But my favorite evidence to this is [link] , a show that ID is nothing but a botched "search and replace" on creationism...isn't that Hilarious...

VE.

ID is widely accepted to be just a rebranding of Creationism and created as an attempt to circumvent various laws in the USA prohibitting the teaching of Creationism in schools. Look up "Intelliegent Design on Trial" by NOVA to see the full extent of the humiliating court case where a highly conservative and creationist believing judge refused to defend ID as being non-religious.

First let me say that 'creationism' is not limited to Young-Earth creationism and that Intelligent Design is, in fact, creationism. Just because they leave the creative 'force' unnamed doesn't mean they're not talking about something antithetical to naturalism.
Second, Intelligent design as its inception is a bunch of religious malarkey. It was created by creationists attempting to use it as a wedge to get creationism in school systems by painting it a different color.
But it's also malarkey because its primary tenant is that x-attribute is too complex to have evolved on its own. That's a begging the question argument, because unlike rocks on Mars we can see the steps between less complex and more complex and no wall that would have prevented them moving in that direction. And the very idea that complex things do not arise out of less complex things is demonstrably wrong. Re: Explosions compressing carbon into diamonds, water droplets forming complex ice crystals, salt flats drying into complex hexagonal tessellations, and so on and so on.

Last, let me just add that there are things we initially thought were man made that turn out to be natural all the time. Including perfect geometric rock formations. Heck we constantly have people bringing glass tubes that look like sculpted glass into archaeology facilities thinking they have some ancient artifact. When it turns out they're actually fulgurites, which are formed when lightning strikes sandy sediment and fuses it into glass tubes. Anyway, that was more an aside, in a 'nature is pretty damn cool' kinda way.

I wish there was some way to edit these comments.

I was going to say about the rocks on Mars that deciding that they were arranged deliberately would not be the end of your inquiries, but rather the beginning of them.

Weird, didn't read that part on harry potter.