Richard Dawkins said
It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
I am wondering what point he is trying to make?
He asks "shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies". I have two problems with that question:
First of all, his tone suggests sarcasm, and that he doesn't think we should be agnostic towards fairies .... but, even if we were agnostic with respect to fairies, ... so what? That does not seem like a major problem, does it? If I say I do not believe in fairies at all, but I am not 100 % closed to the possibility of them existing, then am I being irrational? Am I being silly? Am I being illogical? Am I standing in the way of science? The answers are no, no, no, and no, so what's Dawkins' problem?
My second problem is that he seems to be comparing two things which are not entirely equal. Tales of fairies are a made-up story by humans. It is likely to be false because there's no reason for it to exist other than it being a cute story to tell kids. But that is not the case with a god. The belief in god exists, not because we like to tell stories, but because people find god explanatory of universal phenomenons, of their personal feelings, etc etc. So it does not seem comparable to say that belief or agnosticism with respect to god is equivalent to belief or agnosticism with respect to fairies. The same could be said for the spaghetti monster argument: the spaghetti monster is less likely to exist simply because it's an intentional mockery made up by humans, and not something "universal" such as the concept of god.