Alien Question for Atheists

[robvalue]

Meh.  I'd take Hume's lead and give it a twist: whatever the evidence for God you have is, there is a more probable explanation that is not God.  I don't see how you get around that basic argument (with Hume, contra miracles).  I'll be doing some reading on that soon, but failing any great revelation, that holds.  That and it is, I believe, in principle, impossible to demonstrate any property which is by its nature unlimited (e.g. omnipotence).

I think I could be convinced that this is some sort of controlled reality. If it's a computer simulation for example, then I'm not going to be able to "meet" the designer in his reality (although I guess they could manufacture some sort of clone of me in their reality). I could meet a creator-controlled avatar, which walks me through the evidence in real time. (I could be hallucinating of course, but I'm assuming this state of affairs continues and everyone else witnesses it as well as me.)

That's about as far as it goes. Most theists wouldn't recognize this being as "God" without piling a load of other qualities onto it, which I'm probably going to be unable to witness (amongst those that even make sense). Its own reality generally has to consist of nothing and has no other inhabitants. They'd probably argue against me even saying it is in its own reality. It has to be everything and nothing, so to speak. They can't seem to bear the hypothetical idea that there's more than one level above ours; I guess that's because an imposter could easily be pretending to be one of these religious mythological characters. It has to just be our reality, then God, for some reason.