The problem lies with the difference between colloquial semantics and science.
Probability does not make something "possible" in the sense you'd use it in everyday conversations.
If there is no proof for the existence of deities that means their existence is improbable. It's still possible, but only because EVERYTHING is possible, scientifically speaking.
It's possible that at any given moment the universal constants simply change and the universe turns into a pink lollipop. It's possible, but it's so bloody unlikely that the possibility can easily be discounted and forgotten about.
Science is EXACTLY about that: Finding out rational explanations and testing them. When an explanation ceases working, you try to find a new one. Because it's tedious to have to discard explanations on a daily basis, they are tested VICIOUSLY before they become canonical. If two explanations work equally well, the one that makes less assumptions is the one that should be preferred -- if they have no such similarities, they are both valid until either of them can be disproven, provided they are testable.
The God Hypothesis is inherently untestable because it says God is. It doesn't even TRY to pretend to be testable. It says it right there in the definition of "supernatural": beyond nature, and thus not testable by naturalistic (read: rational) means.
So, to answer a common question asked by theists: if God WOULD suddenly make himself be apparent in a way that would not allow any other explanation than that he IS God, EVERY SINGLE ATHEIST would accept him. Not necessarily as the One True God, but at least as a very advanced sentient being that behaves the way you'd expect God to behave according to scripture.
Does that make us believers? Hardly so. We wouldn't BELIEVE, we would KNOW (not in the Biblical sense) -- we would have facts that hold up under vicious tests (and if those tests wouldn't be vicious, I don't know what would be), not just word of mouth and a heavily mistranslated, mis-copied book written by dead lunatics.
Does that make us agnostics? Only in a very very weird sense of the word. It makes us agnostic to God in the same sense we are agnostic to the FSM, IPU, orbital china pots, little green men and hobgoblins (except for nutty AD&D players maybe). That we don't fully discount the possibility only comes to show it's NOT a matter of faith, not that we aren't fully convinced.
Probability does not make something "possible" in the sense you'd use it in everyday conversations.
If there is no proof for the existence of deities that means their existence is improbable. It's still possible, but only because EVERYTHING is possible, scientifically speaking.
It's possible that at any given moment the universal constants simply change and the universe turns into a pink lollipop. It's possible, but it's so bloody unlikely that the possibility can easily be discounted and forgotten about.
Science is EXACTLY about that: Finding out rational explanations and testing them. When an explanation ceases working, you try to find a new one. Because it's tedious to have to discard explanations on a daily basis, they are tested VICIOUSLY before they become canonical. If two explanations work equally well, the one that makes less assumptions is the one that should be preferred -- if they have no such similarities, they are both valid until either of them can be disproven, provided they are testable.
The God Hypothesis is inherently untestable because it says God is. It doesn't even TRY to pretend to be testable. It says it right there in the definition of "supernatural": beyond nature, and thus not testable by naturalistic (read: rational) means.
So, to answer a common question asked by theists: if God WOULD suddenly make himself be apparent in a way that would not allow any other explanation than that he IS God, EVERY SINGLE ATHEIST would accept him. Not necessarily as the One True God, but at least as a very advanced sentient being that behaves the way you'd expect God to behave according to scripture.
Does that make us believers? Hardly so. We wouldn't BELIEVE, we would KNOW (not in the Biblical sense) -- we would have facts that hold up under vicious tests (and if those tests wouldn't be vicious, I don't know what would be), not just word of mouth and a heavily mistranslated, mis-copied book written by dead lunatics.
Does that make us agnostics? Only in a very very weird sense of the word. It makes us agnostic to God in the same sense we are agnostic to the FSM, IPU, orbital china pots, little green men and hobgoblins (except for nutty AD&D players maybe). That we don't fully discount the possibility only comes to show it's NOT a matter of faith, not that we aren't fully convinced.
