(July 18, 2022 at 4:34 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:(July 14, 2022 at 6:55 pm)Belacqua Wrote: 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.
But should personal testimony actually be considered good enough by anyone, is the question? Even to those claim to have had one?
People have "personal testimony" for an almost endless number of supernatural claims: various mutually exclusive gods, witches, UFO abductions, encounters with bigfoot, encounters with Jinn, ghosts, zombies, exorcisms, etc, etc, etc.
Most of the people that have some of these 'personal experiences', will understand that most of the other of these claims should not be believed based on the peroneal experience of others, many times because they are rightfully skeptical, and understand the unreliability of peroneal experiences. "My personal experience with my specific god is absolutely true... but come on, alien abductions. Let's be serious."
Well, you believe nearly all of the personal experiences you have every day. Unless you're probing the sidewalk in front of you to make sure it's not a hologram, or double checking the produce at the supermarket to check that it's not an illusion.
As I've said a couple of times now, we hold up our experiences, or the claimed experiences of others, against a pre-determined set of things we hold to be possible. And if the interpretation of the experience falls outside those boundaries, we reject it.
Your boundaries are clear. Other people's are different. The point I was making is that you use these boundaries and standards in your continuing position as an atheist. These beliefs -- that certain kinds of testimony should be dismissed -- are essential to your atheism.