An argument against God

[Alex K]

Experience on AF has taught me that Premise 2 is false. There seems to be nothing at all that could persuade an ideological atheist.

Well, there's at least a kernel of truth to that, in the following sense: If some being manifested itself doing things which - to us - seemed magical and supernatural, the rational first hypotheses to me would be to suspect either that

• I had gone insane
  
• Some kind of advanced intelligence is playing tricks on us
  

As much as the believer is conditioned to do so, it is not a justified default position to jump to the supernatural creator of the universe as a first explanation, it really isn't. It is more parsimonious to entertain the hypothesis that it's a non-supernatural and non-omnipotent creator or controller of our reality, e.g. via a simulation. That's not a point to be held against atheists, it is rather a lapse of judgement on the believers' part that they would interpret such an encounter in a God context by default.