Tell us about the dinosaurs

[Ryft]

You seem to believe that you have either evidence or a complelling reason to believe in God. You have probably spelled these out somewhere. Could you please point it out, as I am interested in your reason to believe?

I could, but then you (and others) would no doubt want to object to and contend with various things I would say. None of that would have anything to do with dinosaurs and young-earth creationism, so the entire endeavor can only hijack and derail this thread even further.

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Invisible Pink Unicorn: the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe; a deity, presiding over affairs; the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle.

To my knowledge, you are an atheist. As such, it is safe to assume that you likewise reject IPUs, so I wonder how we disagree over the logical and empirical issues of IPUs. I was of the understanding that IPUs are an historical novelty (c. 1990), which some atheists admit inventing as a religious parody (Ashman, 2007). Surely IPU-belief would qualify as a delusion, should anyone happen to mistakenly take it as real in the face of its being openly admitted as not real?

I think you had mentioned some argument that gives compelling reason for the existence of any character you insert as its subject, but what evidence or compelling reason is there to believe that it is the Christian God that exists and not any other entity inserted as the subject of said argument?

It is called the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG), and the compelling reason by which it excludes any other deity is that the God of Scripture alone accounts for all features argued by the TAG (metaphysics, epistemology, metaethics, and so forth). If the God of Scripture is X, then any other deity is necessarily ¬X; and every ¬X at some point must fail the test by virtue of its not being X. Put in other words, the only way a proposed deity can account for all features argued is by fine-tuning the definition of said deity until it possesses all the properties of X.

But since this gets away from young-earth creationism and dinosaurs, this is not the thread for exploring such issues.

Humor me for a bit and say (for the sake of argument) you examined my IPU theology and could not find any 'fault' with it ...

That would require examining your IPU theology, which has not been done. But since it is admitted as a parody religion; i.e., not real, your having a sincere belief in IPUs qualifies as delusional (not to mention the serious cognitive dissonance of an atheist believing in deity).

There exists no contradictory evidence for the existence of invisible dancing gnomes in my backyard. Is it rational to believe they exist?

The rationality of a belief is not determined by the absence of contradicting evidence (though that helps) but by the presence of supporting evidence or reason for said belief. As David Lund writes, "The truth-tracking method of effective philosophic inquiry would lead us to believe a proposition when the evidence available to us justifies our believing it, to reject a proposition when our evidence disconfirms it, and to suspend judgment about it when our evidence neither confirms nor disconfirms it" (Lund, 2003).

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REFERENCES CITED:

• Ashman, A. T. (2007). The Invisible Pink Unicorn. BBC, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2.
  
• Lund, D. H. (2003). Making Sense of It All: An Introduction to Philosophical Inquiry, 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 15-16.
  

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You do realise that by identifying where science is being misused to test claims outside the context they apply, scientism is also a counter argument to these aforementioned appeals to authority?

That is one of two ways in which "scientism" is used pejoratively to indicate the misuse of science, yes.

I know a good few theists who assert God ... is transcendent and thereby beyond [scientific] investigation or the field of [scientific] inquiry, but then hypocritically proceed to bash scientific concepts or philosophies as 'incoherent' ... Sorry, but you can't have your cake and eat it.

First, those good theists are not the only ones. For example, atheist and skeptic Michael Shermer writes (1999), "What criteria for falsifiability could we establish to determine God's existence or nonexistence? Believers' claim that there is overwhelming evidence, or atheists' claim that there is no evidence, is not a test. If we want to make this a scientific question that can be decided by empirical evidence, the burden of proof is on both believers and nonbelievers to establish operational definitions and quantifiable criteria by which we can arrive at a testable conclusion. What is the operational definition of God and what quantifiable criteria should we use to accept or reject the null hypothesis of God's nonexistence?"

Second, those theists are not hypocrites if they point out that God is beyond the scope of "incoherent" science. They want to have their cake and eat it too only if they bash science on one hand yet esteem it on the other.

If you find arguments from ignorance convincing, that's your prerogative.

I don't, actually. I have no idea where that came from.

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REFERENCES CITED:

• Shermer, M. (1999). Reconsiderations and Recapitulations: Since the October 1999 publication of How We Believe. Positive Atheism. Retrieved from http://www.positiveatheism.org.