The Bible is the claim, not the evidence

[Esquilax]

I agree that varying standards are not exclusively an atheist thing. So given that everyone has an internalized standard of what's believable to them don't we need something outside ourselves to be the standard. Because if we don't, how do we know who's right and who's wrong? Or I suppose two other options would be everyone's right or everyone's wrong.

Yes, and the thing outside ourselves is the objective reality in which we live. As I alluded to earlier, reality cares not a whit what your specific standard is; the things that exist within it will remain.

At face value yes. If something exists and is demonstrable, it would be crazier not to believe it's there. Since I don't know where you stand on this argument I'll ask (and this is where the further questions can come in): some people have argued that we could be living in some kind of alternate reality (like the matrix movies). If a person subscribes to this argument the conclusion is how can we prove something exists? Do you believe this is a valid argument? If not what is your counter argument?

Well, I guess my question in return would be, so what? So what if we're living inside the matrix? There might be some external world out there, but I don't know how one could prove that to be true, and anyway, even if we were we'd still be required to deal with the internal rules of the matrix; matrix fire will still burn me, even if I know for sure that what I'm experiencing is fake. This problem of hard solipsism doesn't actually get us anywhere, and so I don't really view it as something I'm justified in worrying about. Like the question of god, I'll consider it once there's at least a little evidence for it.

This stemmed from the concept of relativity. You accept things as true if they fit your criteria. Someone else accepts something as true as it fits their criteria (though differing from yours). Is the truth relative (to the differing criteria)? Or is one set of the criteria right and one wrong? And if so who decides?

I think it's important that we make a distinction between the truth, and those things that we accept as true. It's the things that we accept as true that are relative, and that's easy to see; we've got people who accept that there's a god, people who don't, people who accept that the moon landing was real, people who don't, etc etc. We can go on forever about the varying disagreements that people have over what's true, but the important thing to remember is that, no matter those disagreements, there is only one thing that actually happened, and therefore only one truth, about which those people disagreeing are either correct or incorrect in their acceptance of it. There either is a god, or there isn't; there's no possible sense in which both could be true, or neither. We either landed on the moon, or we did not; someone's right, and someone's wrong there.

So when we come to the god question, you might very well be right, right now. I could be dead wrong, and I know that's a possibility, because I don't know everything yet. The question of my standard of evidence doesn't say much at all about the relativity of truth, but rather addresses whether or not I'm rationally justified in accepting claims as true or false.

I"m sorry. It was not my intent to demean your politeness.

It's cool, I guess it just amused me to see the significance other people can place in really quite simple sentiments.