What makes people irrational thinkers?

[polymath257]

I can't speak for the OP, but for me, my athreism is a provisional position, it is not a destination.

This seems very reasonable to me, and wise.

I am completely open to being convinced a god or gods exist, but without rational, evidence based, reasoned argument, and valed and sound logic to support the case that a god exists, how would we go about figuring out if it is true, or likely to be true? As long as theists continue to fail to provide good standards of evidence to support their claims, my atheism will continue.

I think you'll see that there are two points here that can be questioned.

The first is whether or not rational evidence based reasoned argument with valid and sound logic really has failed to support the case that god exists. 

The second is whether such an approach is the only or best way to support the case that god exists. 

Believe it or not there are fascinating, non-crazy, challenging thinkers who disagree with you on both points.

The question isn't what is the best way to support the case that a god exists. That is way too specific. It assumes the conclusion.

The question, as I see it, is how to determine, for *anything*, whether it exists or not. What is the general procedure? Then, we can apply it to deities and dwarves, and Higg's bosons, black holes, and sterile neutrinos.

And, by far, the best procedure in *all* cases is to look for evidence, determine when there *should* be evidence, and always require evidence to exist before concluding existence while also looking for alternative explanations for that evidence.

On that standard, deities come up very short. If the evidence for them was anywhere close to as good as that for dark matter, it would be a revolution in theology.

And let me add, that I don't think theists have a rational reason to believe in gods. It is not that my bar is set too high, it's that theirs is set too low.


Or is set differently. It is hard to imagine, in our place, time, and social class, that sane people could disagree with us, but this is what questioning one's own beliefs consists of.

One of the big trappings of smart people is that they start to think all smart people will agree with them.