Drich, you're presupposing that a god exists.
We (and I hope I speak for this thread's atheist repliers) refuse to presuppose that, as we acknowledge it as a fallible method to discover anything.
When you presuppose, you half-convince yourself that that thing exists and if you then proceed to try to find such a thing and you find a few hints that it may exist, you interpret them as positive proof that the thing exists, thus very likely ending up with a wrong conclusion to your investigations.
Scientific knowledge is incomplete and will likely be incomplete for a long long time. So there is always some wiggle room for any divine claim to hint that a god exists on a person who is already half convinced that it may exist (your mustard seed).
But someone who takes the intellectually honest position and does his/her best to eliminate such pitfalls, then that person will never start half-convinced. They will start with no assumption of existence and work from there. If any evidence surfaces, it will be scrutinized and matched against other known phenomena. Only after exhausting all previously known explanations, must a new one be put forth.
Thus far, none of these new explanations have been "god-did-it".
Drich, this is the mountain you must go over to get through to us. Don't start on your side, start on ours and then walk us over.
You keep starting on your side... that doesn't work.
We (and I hope I speak for this thread's atheist repliers) refuse to presuppose that, as we acknowledge it as a fallible method to discover anything.
When you presuppose, you half-convince yourself that that thing exists and if you then proceed to try to find such a thing and you find a few hints that it may exist, you interpret them as positive proof that the thing exists, thus very likely ending up with a wrong conclusion to your investigations.
Scientific knowledge is incomplete and will likely be incomplete for a long long time. So there is always some wiggle room for any divine claim to hint that a god exists on a person who is already half convinced that it may exist (your mustard seed).
But someone who takes the intellectually honest position and does his/her best to eliminate such pitfalls, then that person will never start half-convinced. They will start with no assumption of existence and work from there. If any evidence surfaces, it will be scrutinized and matched against other known phenomena. Only after exhausting all previously known explanations, must a new one be put forth.
Thus far, none of these new explanations have been "god-did-it".
Drich, this is the mountain you must go over to get through to us. Don't start on your side, start on ours and then walk us over.
You keep starting on your side... that doesn't work.