WLC: "You can't prove the negative"

[polymath257]

If people were inclined, this is a very reasonable way to begin a discussion of classical theism, which of course never claimed that God would be some sort of physical object accessible to the senses. Since Plato, God is much more like Justice, or Mercy. Or numbers. These are things we don't sense, but can know of in the mind since we extrapolate their existence from actions and objects in the world. 

I know that most people here won't accept this argument either, but it shows how, when someone presents his reasons, discussion is possible.

And the difficulty is that most (not all) atheists reject Platonism as well. I, for one would say that Justice and Mercy are social constructs and no not exists separately from human societies (or perhaps societies of other conscious entities). Numbers are an abstraction: a linguistic trick that, again, do not exist independently.

If God is yet another abstraction, a metaphor for what we idealize, then I have few problems with theism (I might suggest other values, but that isn't as central to the question). Such metaphors are useful for structuring a culture and are a wonderful basis for humor. But most believers don't believe just that. They believe in a separately existing conscious entity that was involved in the formation of the world around us. That is the notion that I find rather silly.

So to really get a discussion of the Platonic deity, we first need to discuss such notions as 'existence', 'causality', and 'necessity'. I have found that believers and non-believers tend to deal with such issues very differently.