(July 14, 2022 at 5:56 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Yes, I have a goal to have as many true beliefs as possible, and eliminate as many false beliefs as possible. Accepting poorly evidenced claims of personal experience with gods, is not a good was to achieve my goal.
Yes, I agree with you. This is what I've been saying.
Any atheist who has heard the claims religious people make, and given any thought to them, has rejected those claims.
As when we evaluate any kind of claim at all, we have principles we use about what constitutes good evidence. For many people, personal testimony is not good enough, because (as I said) we consider it unreliable when it doesn't align with our larger beliefs about how the world is.
So I think we agree on this point. Thinking atheists have a number of principles they hold to, and a number of standards they use. Their continuing atheism is a result of what they hold to be the best principles.
