(May 22, 2015 at 12:43 pm)Bad Wolf Wrote:(May 21, 2015 at 8:57 pm)Freedom4me Wrote:Oh I didn't say there isn't any rational reason to believe in god. The problem is, no matter how rational you are, you can still be wrong. No matter how rational your reasoning is. Very smart people are just better at rationalising their theism. But if you truly believe that there is evidence for god, and that i'm just making an assumption that there isn't any evidence, please provide me with this evidence and I will be happy to refute it.
This might seem like a minor point but in your example of the jar of sweets, if the number is quite large (let's say over 300) then it is probably safe to assume that you are justified in assuming that he couldn't have counted all of them, therefore there is no way he could know whether the number is even or odd. But the unstated assumption you are making about atheism vs theism is that there simply isn't any evidence around us that would rationally support theism, and thus atheism is the default position. But that claim is itself, just another assertion.
I agree with you that some people are clever enough to rationalize (rather persuasively) their position on something even when they know they are actually wrong. People are biased when confronted with a issue that involves one's self-interest. But this bias works both ways. The notion that the default position is or ought to be atheism is an assertion. I could be wrong but I don't see any way to re-phrase that assertion that makes it any more than just an assertion.
