Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?

[Esquilax]

Is lack of belief the best I can do? Yes, because I understand the nature of the game I'm playing.

Frankly, that anyone can look back at the history of any particular religion and still opt for gnostic atheism is baffling to me. A simple walk through the history of religious claims, the way they retract from discovery, the way they shift, shows that claiming active disbelief is folly. You are not facing the same god every time. The nature of it will change over time, and it will change from person to person: this theist believes in a personal god who grants prayers. That theist, of the same denomination no less, believes that god doesn't answer prayers because of free will, or that god helps those who helps themselves, or some other thing. Over here we have a deist who believes in an absentee god. Centuries ago god crafted rainbows, until we discovered how rainbows formed naturally, and then he didn't. God made the earth shake, until we discovered tectonic plates, and then he didn't... Unless he did in this specific instance to send a message about gay marriage or something. But he doesn't do it every time. Unless he does because abortion is so evil. Also he sends storms to rage over sinful towns, but not the storm that damaged Pastor Mike's roof, that was a natural storm. Or maybe it was the devil.

We just know, heathen! Don't try to take our faith from us!

Consistency in the particulars is not something religion does, and this is because religions have solid motivation to change so that they're always responsible for the good things, but also just outside of any means of testing those claims. God claims that persist must also actively resist investigation, and that means changing to suit the times, while pretending they've never changed at all. It's a sort of divine natural selection: if you can test a god, there's a possibility it might fail the test. If a god is impervious to testing, then it's safe from that risk. But if a god can be tested, while remaining amorphous enough that failed tests don't count because faith or something, then you've got a god that only passes tests... somehow! Gnostic atheism is a loser's game because of this: theists don't have any qualms about tailoring their religious views to lurk just beyond the range of our knowledge, even if perhaps not consciously, and they're very quick to scoff at how unreasonable it is to actively disbelieve in their god, because their god is hiding just outside of your ability to falsify it, so you're just presupposing that it doesn't exist! You just want to sin!

So yes, I lack belief in god claims, because why the fuck would I actively disbelieve something that I won't even find out about specifically until maybe fifteen minutes into a conversation with a theist about it? And that will be a completely different claim if I turn around and talk to that theist's friend? What's reasonable about that?