Evolution, the Bible, and the 3.5 Million Dollar Violin - my article

[Jeffonthenet]

The former has a connotation of fairy tales which to attach to God would seem to presuppose God is a fairy tale and thus be a sort of circular argument.

Why is it fair to presuppose that fairies are fairytales, but unfair to presuppose the same about gods?

No argument has successfully shown that the existence of God is in any way as likely as a fairy tale. I could turn the question around to you as well, why is it fair to presuppose that God is as likely to be true as a fairy tale.

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As has already been explained to you, personal testimony -regardless of whose it may be, mine, yours, your mother's- does not increase the likelihood of any given event or incident actually occurring. Personal testimony has nothing to do with the probability of anything at all, beyond the likelihood of undeserved credit being given to personal testimony by other human beings -a testament to how much we value social interaction if ever there was one-. It doesn't matter who told you pink elephants went on parade.......no matter how strongly you trust this person, no matter how certain they are of what they saw. Your confidence in their honesty, and their conviction -even if both were absolutely justified- still does not satisfy as a measure for determining probability or likelihood, and ignores a great deal of what we do know about how completely and utterly we are able to delude ourselves. Personally, I doubt that you would actually trust anyone who fed you the story you offered as an example, even your mother. I'd be willing to wager some sideways glances would be exchanged. Sorry to sound cynical, but that's just my opinion. I have more confidence in your ability to think clearly than you would seem to suggest with that example. I don't say this as an isult to your mothers honesty, or your trust in dear old mom, and I hope you don't take it that way.....but it does seem that this particular example was brinksmanship with absurdity-and even so, teenagers dressed as video game characters is not exactly an extraordinary event -you took efforts to make it ordinary almost immediately. If you want to keep it extraordinary, it wouldn't be teenagers dressed-as...it would be Mario and Luigi themselves mugging your poor mother. I have to call massive bs on both the example, and your continued defense of it.

You only gave an example of one instance where personal testimony wasn't enough to convince you of an event. However, from that it doesn't follow that personal testimony is irrelevant to the probability of an event. As for the mario example, I can't believe you wont consider this extraordinary. Fundamentally our difference seems to be that you consider God as extraordinary as a purple flying elephant with a fairy godmother while I do not. However, the case that God is so unlikely as that, I have never seen defended sucessfuly against objections which leads me to believe it is only perpetuated by appeals to ridicule, uncommon presuppositions (like the apparent "self-evidence" that there is no God), and irrational appeals to emotion. If your atheism must rely upon the assumption that your opposition is self-evidently irrational, you have built a tower on a sand dune and it will collapse.

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Hey everyone, I haven't been posting here recently because I am focusing on my formal debate in the philosophy section of this site. However, I think many of the things addressed here might be dealt with in a more in depth way there, so you are welcome to check it out.

Thank you for the offer,but having read some of your posts, I'd rather eat my own scrotum.

I wish you the best