There is no god or gods!

[Darkstar]

That would be the case if empirical evidence should reasonably be expected to be found. If not, then we're back at only being able to conclude that we can't come to a conclusion.

If god is deliberately hiding his own existence, then we won't find evidence. If he is 'everywhere', as some theists claim, then there should be mountains of it.

Let's look at another problem to illustrate what I mean. Consider multiverse theory. There is theoretical support for the hypothesis, but nothing in the way of empirical evidence that supports multiverse theory over the standard inflationary model. In fact, the nature of the theory makes it impossible at this time to test empirically.

On that basis, it is certainly not reasonable to conclude that it is true, nor is it reasonable to conclude that it is false, or (in your words) almost certainly false (on the basis of empiricism). We cannot hope to prove something true or false based on empirical evidence we are not positioned to gather.

As another example, we cannot empirically examine the non-observable portion of our universe. It exists nonetheless.

True, we cannot prove nor disprove multiverse theory; it is beyond what we can observe, just as god is claimed to be.

This is not to say that a deity with specific contradictory properties could not be logically ruled out, of course.

Therin lies the problem; of all the gods that theists claim to 'know' exist, they all fail in this regard. It is true that a god could theoretically exist, but almost certainly none of the gods proposed by religion.

If religion hadn't proposed god, no one would have ever thought about it because there is no evidence for it. Neither the multiverse nor god can be currently proven or disproven, but I would give the multiverse theory a major statistical advantage compared to a god in that even while blindly speculating one can be sure that of all possible explanations for something, an omnipotent, omniscent being that arose from nothing is the least likely explanation (and by Occam's razor).

I do not think it is absolutely impossible for a god to exist, but if the chance is 0.001%, I feel comfortable saying he doesn't. Someone said earlier (not sure if it was in this thread) that there is a difference between being certain, and having absolute proof. I do not have absolute proof that the sun will rise tomorrow, but I am certain of it in the same way I feel certain in saying that god does not exist.

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That of course raises more questions. Was the "miracle" real? Or were you fooled?

I saw a magician cut a woman in half and then put her back together once. Of course it was an illusion, but that serves to illustrate the point: if you witness something known to be impossible, absent any natural explanation of how it was done, how would you know if it was real, illusion, or hallucination?

Furthermore.... What is a god? What is impossible?

The questions aren't quite as simple as they may seem.

1. God can repeat 'miracles' because he is omnipotent. In this context,a miracle is not simply 1 in 1,000,000, but something considered impossible. Upon closer examination, the cutting in half would be revealed to be fake, a true 'miracle' would not.

2. So we all simultaneously hallucinated the same exact dog, and so did everyone else who saw it?

3. True, they aren't simple. If god did something 'impossible', then it wouldn't be truly impossible. If we understood god, he wouldn't be supernatural, but natural. Maybe if he did something that should theoretically be impossible, we could call him god...but he could just be some uber-advanced alien that only seemed omnipotent...

No, I'm not saying it was aliens...