Why make stupid unsustainable arguments?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Okay, this is a caliber of stupidity I must attempt to digest one bite at a time.

Maybe you're just one step behind the people you are so dismissive of. Are you one of those who will eventually revert to your deep-rooted faith once you get YOUR "mad at god" period behind you? Maybe you're one of those "I used to be a believer, but now I'm an athiest" types who has been hurt by some negative experience that will eventually be healed thereby enabling you to return to the faith you once held. Is that it?

I didn't really have a negative experience with the church or my faith, except to realize that the people who were peddling the things they believed to be true had no idea they could be easily disproved. I had been taught for years to dissect other "wrong" religions, and when I realized that science could demonstrate that some of the things my church taught were in fact not true, I turned that weapon on my own beliefs. Poof! I am not angry about it, then or now. I do get upset when people make false accusations (like "you are angry") against me, but not because of the faith; I'd be just as pissed off if falsely accused of being a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Get real. People who were every bit as committed to non-belief as you are today HAVE come to faith in a supreme being as a result of deep reflection on one or more of the philosophical arguments.  You can read about them online, watch their videos on YouTube or buy their books at Amazon. 

What? They weren't true atheists? We both know that fallacy. Was Anthony Flew "fooled"? Are other former atheists simply idiots because they have come to a different conclusion than you have? You're right and they're wrong, eh? No, it's possible to be rational about a false idea as well as irrational about something that is true. To claim that intelligent people are simply fools is the easy way out. These arguments are not so easily dismissed; if they were complete rubbish, they would not still exist. 

Emphasis mine. As I pointed out, there's often a financial motivation for claiming "ex-atheist" when starting to write books of that sort. It sells copy.

Though there is some skepticism regarding Flew's final descent into dementia, and the degree of influence from those around him who sought mightily to convert him to religion, I happen to think his conversion was genuine. Even so, his conversion was to a strange form of Deism, not to Christianity. It's not a huge leap from agnostic atheism to agnostic theism/deism. I am not making the True Scotsman fallacy, here. I acknowledge that it's possible; it's simply extremely rare for a well-considered, well-researched atheist to convert to religion, as opposed to the type I described (and which you ignored), wherein they simply went through a period of anger and/or rebellion. That you would suggest I am simply angry or rebellious just makes you an asshole.

As to your claim that the arguments would not still be around if they were complete rubbish, that's complete rubbish! Numerous arguments which are complete rubbish are still around. Shit, I just got into an argument tonight with a guy who's still convinced that President Obama is a Muslim (despite drinking beer, being pro-choice, loving bacon, and going to church). We're still celebrating Columbus Day, despite the fact that we know he was a genocidal, greedy, raping psychopath who almost singlehandedly wiped out the Arawak population, and that he wasn't even the first white person to "discover" the New World. Persistence of a myth is dependent on how much people want to preserve that myth, not necessarily how accurate it is.

And as best I can tell, there are apologists on both sides of the divide...cranking out books to try to persuade people that their view is correct. Are Hitchens and Dawkins any different than Craig or McDowell? Haven't they banked a fair bit of money over the past few years? Are they simply "fooling" a different target market into handing over that cash?

I've read only two of Dawkins' books (one of which was a science book, not a book of atheist "apologetics", and the other of which I disliked and found problems within), and none by Hitchens, so I couldn't tell you. But frankly, it's part of why I don't take their arguments all that seriously, or have a particular desire to read their work. I prefer to formulate my own opinions on subjects of such importance.

Now, I'm curious about something, and I've asked this question before (though not to you directly):  what physical evidence is offered before the Justices of the Supreme Court in the United States? When the Court upheld Obamacare, were photos, bloody clothing, shell casings or imprints of tire tread admitted into evidence? And when the Court legalized gay marriage, did the attorneys present bank deposit slips, bags of cocaine and a dashcam video to make their case?

Or are these examples of ARGUMENTS being made in court based upon ideas, legal precedents, the constitution and the law?

So, you can split hairs over whether the philosophical arguments are "evidence", but they are still being used effectively to win people's hearts and minds to the theist position, and if atheists want to counter that, they need to do more than chant, "Show me the evidence. Show me the evidence." in their vain attempts to attain some godless nirvana.

Why is it you people always turn to courts of law to "make your case" (if you'll pardon the pun) for argumentation? That's what one of the apologists I debunked and sent back to my parents did... Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial.

Every one of those cases you mention did hinge upon facts. Both sides presented what they considered to be evidence, and then presented arguments for why those pieces of evidence were valid and supportive of their arguments. For instance, in the case you mentioned (gay marriage), several studies were presented which examined the impact of gay marriage on family, as well as historical evidence of when homosexuality became an issue (one of the legal standards is "deeply rooted in American tradition", a fact which must be demonstrated for the Court), and the Court took note of which argument was best supported by facts. I have not read the case on Obamacare, but in that case, it would simply have been a matter of considering whether or not the claims of unconstitutionality were supported by a careful reading of the US Constitution and related precedents. In neither of those cases would bags of cocaine (or other red herrings) have been relevant evidence. Like science, courts follow a very carefully-prescribed standard of what constitutes evidence, and what arguments may follow from such evidence, when reaching their conclusions. That is often not true in everyday trials at the local level, which is why we have an appellate court system, and why errors are so often caught, wrongful convictions overturned. We ignore the Rules of Evidence at our peril.

But in the end, you strike the nail upon the head. They are not trying to present facts; they are trying to "win the hearts and minds" with arguments that sound plausible, even when they are not as well-supported as they're made out to be. That's what we do here, mainly, is point out the flaws in arguments that theists consider unassailable, and show them where the facts are contrary to their positions.

When people come here and argue that the scientific method is inadequate, and that we need to consider some form of woo-woo mysticism as evidence, we're going to hammer that nail back down, hard. The Scientific Method was specifically designed to weed out human error to the highest degree possible (in a way that courts will never accomplish, unfortunately), and it demands that its ideas be 100% factual, testable, and reproducible for a very good reason.

Expect to be held to that standard, here. And expect to be mocked when you suggest we abandon it, or suggest that just because an idea is popular to the layperson, we should accept it as true. (This is called the argumentum ad populum, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to use it.)