Allow me to point out and dispute a couple of your conclusions, though not for the sake of unnecessarily prolonging this discussion.
For instance, in this thread, most of the personal 'heat' came from professed Atheists who were enraged at me for challenging their position and they entered automatically into the age-old bitter Atheist Vs Theist battle, imagining I 'must' be their despised foe, despite the fact that I wasn't even a Theist and had never once espoused or defended belief in God. LOL.
Exactly. Don't think it was lost on atheists that you assumed a contrarian position. May I note your apparent glee at being the 'challenger'. Which is fine. To sit behind your keyboard, knowing you were an agnostic, but morphing into a theistic position for the sake of "argument", is not in of itself a virtue.
As an aside, I am somewhat of a deist who sides with atheists on most of these types of discussions. So I do understand to a point where you reside. I get frustrated at atheists too. But I admit that while their attitude does sometimes piss me off, their facts rarely do.
Lastly, when one leaves everything to the imagination, one deserves what various imaginations casts upon them. In this case, you left no one a choice but to imagine you were a theist apologist in this discussion. What you really were, (with all respect) was a camouflaged debater, hell bent on arguing against atheists, just because, you know, they are so hypocritical. (to that I say, whatever, with all respect)
A more honest path would have been to argue that a third possibility exists. (and it does.) Ironically, it is the position you espouse, that agnosticism, the ugly kissing coursing of atheism, is a superior position to atheism, based both on definition and predisposition. A more fair discussion and debate based on your opinions would have resulted in that.
I see Theists and Atheists as considerably more alike than either group would like to believe, and such a response is indicative of this IMO.
If only for the emotion often expressed, yes, I agree. Lets also include in this group then, Red Sox and Yankees fans, Cowboys and Redskins fans, Liverpool vs Manchester United, where emotion is also expressed at astonishingly loud levels.
The virtue of the atheists position is that the arrows they throw actually have facts attached. And a willingness to be honest. If you were to look at the responses to your rebuttals in this discussion, mine included, you would find that no atheist would argue that if god did exist, and evidence were given, that it would be rejected. Theists on the other hand, cannot claim this willingness to be swayed by available evidence. I would hope you would not disagree on this point.
Lastly, it is my experience that cyber lynching occurs for a variety of reasons. I would take no pleasure in barbecuing your contrarianism for its own sake, but alas, I would indeed skewer such a stance with Heinz 57. :)
Contrarianism is tasty and has a lot of fiber, resulting in very satisfying BM's.