Q: do you, Christian, claim that God exists, rather than you believe that he exists?

[Esquilax]

That is not what he said or even intimated.

It is the short version of his position, however; you can't claim to respect science while still rejecting its conclusions based on personal preference.

This is not an argument from popularity. Notice what he said. He said that too many intelligent people believed in the supernatural for him to dismiss it. He did not say that many intelligent people believed the supernatural existed and therefore the supernatural exists. You have presented a strawman of his position.

No, I actually haven't; the argument from popularity is still in effect, as "many people accepted this," is a shaky ground to even entertain the possibility that such a thing is true.

If the vast majority of people throughout history had been atheists, I could not justifiably dismiss atheism. I would ask myself why they were atheists and set out to investigate their arguments and reasonings for their views.

There is, however, no direct link between that historical fact and atheism being true. Nor is such strength in numbers even required for investigation; you should be evaluating the positions of every claim that you come across, not merely the popular ones. That's just due diligence.

Also, what you're talking about there is reason and evidence, so to disregard the determinations of science- which is made of reason and evidence- in favor of the supernatural merely because it was widely believed is fallacious reasoning.

What you say is true, just because the bible is correct on a number of things, it does not necessarily follow that therefore everything in the bible is true. Nor does he state this. Once again you are constructing a strawman of his position.

Actually, you're right there, I think I misread Lek's post a little. Sorry about that, Lek.

You then go on to state that the bible's "magic" claims have yet to be demonstrated or even shown to be possible.

The error in this reasoning is not unique to you, but a great many atheists I have dialogued with commit this error. It is called a "category mistake". You essentially are asking for non-transcendant, empirical, scientifically verifiable, conrete, material evidence for a transcendant, immaterial, incorporeal being that exists beyond the scope of scientific observation and measurement.

Look, I'm so tired of hearing this line of crap. You don't get to put your god beyond the reach of any form of testability or detectability and then complain when I say that nobody has justified their magic claims over him. Just saying "oh, there can be no evidence for miracles or god," doesn't suddenly mean that you're all absolved of the burden of proof. What it means is that you have formulated a position that can never be rationally justified, and therefore should not be believed.

Secondly, empiricism as I have stated earlier is self-refuting. So I hope you are not an empiricist. What you should ask for is evidence that would be consistent with that of a transcendant being.

You sure did state that it's self refuting.

Of course, when you did so you failed to take into account that we can compare the kinds of things we'd have to believe if we removed this expectation of at least some empirical support, versus those things we would believe if we retained it. What you'll find is that the former position, where you'd have to consistently lower your standards of evidence in order to accept things without empirical backing, leads to the acceptance of mutually exclusive, contradictory positions, as suddenly you'd have to accept all religious claims, not just your own.

Meanwhile, no such logical inconsistencies exist within a position that accepts empirical evidence alone, which is evidence enough, I would say, that empiricism works. Since the other position in this binary leads to contradictions, it cannot function. This is support in favor of the statement ""We should only take a proposition to be true if it can be scientifically proven."

Now, I'm not a strict empiricist in the sense that I'd need complete scientific proof, because that's a useless concept. I would, however, require evidence that leads to the proposition under consideration.

Thirdly there is no evidence that can be presented for the existence of God that cannot be simply dismissed or explained away by them that are unwilling to accept it.

Which is a perfect way to cover up a lie! "Oh, I could tell you the truth, but you wouldn't believe it. Oh, you just won't accept my evidence because you don't want it to be true!" Simply a wonderful way to avoid considering the prospect that maybe your evidence isn't as convincing as you think, merely by reinterpreting everyone's motives so that they just hate your evidence. It's not you, there's something wrong with them!