Atheism or agnosticism - a guide to choosing your new non-religion

Ok so lately there's been a question weighing on my mind regarding what pigeonhole I should put myself in when it comes to religion. Its been a good few years now since I realised that the Catholic faith in which I was raised was complete bullshit. Since then I have managed to stay outside the whole atheist vs. agnostic debate. Lately however, several different news articles and tv programmes have conspired to bring the question to the forefront of my thinking.
For those of you in need of a little philosophy refresher, atheism is the belief that there is no god (although some claim that it is the knowledge that there is no god) where as agnosticism is best described as I saw on a forum recently as:

"a man shall not profess to know or believe that for which he has no grounds to believe"

The source of the argument therefore, is the view of atheists that agnostics are fence-sitting cowards who refuse to get drawn into any kind of religious debate while agnostics view atheists as intellectually weak people who need to believe in something even if its nothing. Now that is probably an unfair generalisation and it would be wrong to tar all atheists and agnostics with the same brush but these viewpoints seem to recur again and again.
As a scientist, albeit armchair scientist at the moment, I have always tended to side with the agnostics because the world that I see has always been about facts and figures and provable arguments and atheism does seem to be a leap into the unknown. There seems to be a degree of blind faith involved. In addition, there are a lot of people who label themselves as atheist who do so only because they have become disillusioned with the church and see atheism or at least calling themselves atheist as some sort of rebellion or counter-attack against whatever problem they have with their faith. If you watch the "Red Hot Catholic Love" episode of South Park you'll see what I mean.
Lately though, having explored the subject in more detail I started to realise that some of the ideas that I had had for years regarding religion and faith were more in line with atheist thought than agnosticism. One quote in particular by Stephen Roberts:

"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours"

reminded me of a thought I had while reading through a dictionary of world mythologies. It seems to me that if there were some core truth to Christianity (well Catholicism anyway) that there would be some event, some record in the bible which was entirely unique which had not been seen before. In the words of U2, I still haven't found what I'm looking for. There just isn't any concept or character or event in the bible which hasn't been recorded in some older world mythology.
By way of example look at the story of Moses in the basket in the river which was taken from the story of Horus in Egyptian mythology, the story of god taking mortal form to save the lives of his people like the story of Quetzlcoatl in Toltec mythology, the depiction of god as an old man with a flowing white beard like Zeus in Greek mythology or even the great flood which can be found in no less than twenty three different world mythology some of which date back almost 5000 years such as the epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian mythology.
Having read all of these fascinating stories from all around the world I soon came to realise a few things. One of which was the tendency for the number of deities in the dominant mythology of the day to decrease as time went on. We have gone from a world dominated by multitheistic faiths such as Greek, Roman and Egyptian to the monotheistic faiths of the last millennium such as Christianity and Islam to atheistic faiths such as Buddhism and humanism. Secondly, and probably more importantly, religion or mythology, whatever you want to call it, has always been about a person or group of people trying to explain the world around them.
A quick perusal of ancient mythologies will show that people tended to create gods in their own images to match the level of technological and philosophical awareness they had. Thus you had Norse mythology where Thor created thunder and lightning as he rode across the sky and swung his mighty hammer Mjollnir and Freyr as the god of agriculture and fertility. Then in Greek mythology you had similarly tangible deities such as Poseidon ruling over the sea and Artemis, goddess of the hunt but you also had more existential deities such as Athena, goddess of wisdom and Apollo, god of truth and prophecy. People have always invented gods which represent things which are close to their hearts or perhaps more darkly, representations of how they wished they could be.
Christianity is a prime example of this. In the bible, or at least the new testament, biblical writers have managed to create a god which reflects how people like to think of themselves even though they know its untrue. Thus you have a god which is compassionate, merciful, loving and forgiving. Most people just aren't like that but its the ideal that they strive for which may not be a bad thing.
My aim here though is not to change anyone's religion but merely to confirm my own or lack thereof. I respect people's religion although as someone once said:

"You should respect someone's religion in the same way that you respect their theory that their wife is beautiful and their children smart."

Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe, even if it is Scientology. This is what really irritates me about evangelism. The idea of people trying to brainwash, bully or otherwise persuade you to their way of thinking is infuriating, not least of which because it contradicts the very word of god they are trying to spread:

"Turn not your steps into pagan territory and do not enter any samaritan city. Go instead to the lost sheep of the houses of Israel and preach saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 10: 5-8

But evangelism isn't just brainwashing people its also lying to them. There's a certain dishonesty in this kind of make it up as you go along kind of religion that really annoys me as well. The syncretic and canonical nature of christianity allows the church to twist scripture to suit whatever mission statement is best suited to winning over the biggest number of new customers.
This is evident most clearly in the ongoing stem cell research debate. There are a number of questions which, legitimately deserved to be asked regarding the future of stem cell research. I would have thought however, that any religious objection to such research would have to have some sort of scriptural foundation i.e. a passage in the bible. Once again, it would appear that I'm wrong. The only passage I could find which could be interpreted as authoritative in this matter is Leviticus 17:11 which states:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood"

This would seem to indicate that according to the bible that life begins when the blood begins to circulate which happens when the foetus is 8 days old and not at conception and yet the christians have taken it upon themselves to make up their own rule.
At the end of it all, I realised that my own particular worldview has been shaped by many factors, increasing my knowledge of the natural world and the universe, exploring the truth behind the simple religious stories of my childhood and coming to terms with the fact that the biggest problem with religion is religious people. I will leave the last word on this one to Penn Jillette who sums up the impact of the bible quite nicely:

"Whatever you do don't read the bible for a moral code. It advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition and murder. Read it because we need more atheists and nothing will get you there faster than reading the damn bible."