What the God debate is really about

[Mudhammam]

Whateverist and Deidre, I think we should also keep in mind that what we're discussing here are only the metaphysical presumptions both atheists and theists are to some extent forced to make at the very bottom level of reasoning, or as their called, "first principles." What religion does from there is try to blur the lines between our subjective philosophies and objective facts about the world. Once they begin making claims about gods interacting in the world, having specific desires or plans for our species, etc., they can only argue that this extends beyond their own unsubstantiated (to everyone else) opinion, that is, their subjective experiences (which in my opinion don't account for jack in the domain of knowledge, i.e. public information that we are all privy to) by meeting the reasonable demand of empirical evidence... to which there is none.