Deism for non-believers

[FallentoReason]

Yes, but your thread started taking on the stance that atheists are left with no option but a belief in some plausible God when they get however far down your scale it takes for that version of G-d to be unfalsifiable, and that is simply wrong, is it not?

Yeah I think it's reasonable to say I assumed too much to begin with. After discussing this more thoroughly so far, I think my scale deals only with plausibility and that's it. The only thing one could do after determining where to stop on the scale is then have the faith that said god indeed exists. Well.. that's not where I want discussion to be headed really. I thought that through philosophy and reason it could be shown that a deist-type god had to exist.

The probability of a God existing and its existence are separate, and you seem to be bordering on an argument from ignorance in that you are saying that a plausible God is a likely God.
Like I said before, just because you can create a mental God who fits the criterion the universe arbitrates doesn't make that particular God or any Gods like it any more likely to exist than Russell's teapot.

I see it the same way as when people say life most likely exists on other planets because there's billions upon billions of planets out there. The probability that there is life then becomes rather high. My scale I believe has heaps of definitions of gods that don't contradict reality, which in turn means that one of them could eventually exist. Am I being fallacious without knowing it?

Mentioned as a way of judging belief in a higher power in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkin's scale determines to what extent you can hold to the belief that a given God exists. Varying degrees require varying certainty, and while God can exist in a personally satisfactory way, or rather, be more likely when he has reached a level of plausibility that satiates the palette of the individual, that God cannot rise above a 1 because he lacks evidence. And this might be rather haphazard of me, but in order to prove anything, including God, you need evidence.
(Evidence can be logical, as long as it is based on reality and not some metaphysical daydream, abstracted and sundered from any trace of actuality.)

Huh, that's pretty interesting. I've never been fond of the four horsemen of atheism but I might look into that argument some more.

I agree that evidence is necessary to be able to come to a conclusion that something is true. When you say the evidence has to be based on reality, do you mean it in a material way? Because plausible gods that are immaterial by definition can't be shown to exist through material means.

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If we follow the logic of the No Free Lunch theorem with respect to evolutionary algorithms, and don't bind our notion of a Deist god by the shell of the past, the probability ends up being that the most likely god is of the Lovecraftian sort, about which we're probably better off not knowing.

Did you ever pause to consider how many more malevolent and evil gods are compatible with the world we see, than any gods possessed of good nature?

Wow.. I'm feeling especially dumb today. Sorry, I couldn't understand how the No Free Lunch theorem ties in with Deist gods!

I haven't considered malevolent and evil gods. I haven't taken into consideration the intentions of these gods though. I was focusing more on their definitions and whether their hypothetical existence would contradict reality.

In a sense, I see Deism falling into the same trap as agnosticism — attempting to break free of tradition only to create a new tradition that is a synthesis of the old and some noble sentiments; they never reach escape velocity to break free of the problems of the past. Just ask yourself which Deist god is more probable, the impersonal shadow of Christianity, or my blessed Kali who orders the warp and rhythm of creation. Did you ever consider Shaktism as an equally plausible alternative to your Deism? If not, why not?

I see you refer to these 'problems of the past' a lot. What problems exactly?

I don't think that a Deist god would have anything to do with established religion(s) of the world, because all of them make physical claims of different sorts but I haven't seen the evidence that shows these claims are true. So, yes, I did consider them but discarded them straight away according to the scale in the OP.