I'm incredibly curious...come off of what? Because, (and no offense) if you mean "come off of the hubris of absolute certainty in spirits, a higher power, etc." then really it seems like asking "What...is our problem?" is replacing one form of hubris with another. I'm fascinated by the presumed omniscience built into statements like "We seem a species of fantasists. What would we be like, I ask on the eve of a US State-of-the-Union address, if we weren't so disposed to imagine a god or a devil lurking in every cave, every cloud, every issue?"

My comment about agnosticism, atheism and absolute certainty seems to have gone unnoticed (Religion and sex post). Have you had a chance to read anything by C.S. Lewis, preferably a little from his atheistic period and from his defense of Christian beliefs?

sps,
I have been thinking about your pro-agnostic comment (actually under the post "An Indifferent Cosmos"), in which you give our inability to really know what "energy" is as example of why we should be more humble in saying we know god does or does not exist. Mentioned this in my seminar the other day, in fact.
I can't deny "hubris" of various sorts. And I haven't read C.S. Lewis, yet -- only about him a little.
However, I still think there's a long bumpy, dangerous road from fascinating philosophical questions, like what is "energy," to what do often seem to me to be all-too-predictable fantasies of kings or big daddies in the sky (or increasingly hazy attempts to update same).
As I've noted in my post on "Atheist or Agnostic," the agnostic-atheist divide seems best understood in terms of the two flavors of Greek skepticism. I, with the Academic skeptics, am not ready to give up all pretense to knowledge. So I am prepared to speculate on what energy likely isn't: a moral or teleological or extrasensory force.