Answers to an Apologist Redux

[Angrboda]

Typical Christian apologetics: Assert something false to be true, ask the non-believer to explain it. What the?



I don't know what, if anything, would convince me that God is real. There are many displays between the mundane and being God which can be fulfilled by something else. If being the creator of all is a necesary property of God, how does one demonstrate that? I guess it has to go back to skepticism and the scientific method: evidence can increase the probability that something is true, but that certainty never reaches 100%. And one has to take into account base rates, prior probability, framing of prior probability and so on. If I encountered an extremely powerful Djinn in the desert, could he persuade me that he might be God? Of course; that figures into the base rate. Can drugs and neurological defects or misbehaviors convince me that I've met God? Into the prior probabilities! Is it possible to have a dream so real you mistake it for a memory? Into the prior probabilities!

In sum, I don't that it's realistically possible to convince me, 100%, that something is God. Half because of the deep well of improbability that He sits in, half because of potential not-God explanations of experience.

But then, I'm an odd bird in that regard. I don't think I could be convinced, 100%, that the real world exists. Is this a dream, am I an idea in the mind of God, am I a brain in a 16 dimension vat? There's no way to determine which is true.

So I remain agnostic as to the existence of reality, while believing it to be real. And gods, yes, I believe in one, but I would be foolish to assert my belief as knowledge.