What Would It Take To Be Convinced?

[Simon Moon]

What if this god does not interact with the universe?

Then it is indistinguishable from a god that does not exist. 

I think it is intellectually dishonest to refuse the concept in the first place because you consider it ridiculous - I could do that with anything I wanted to repeal the possibility of debating.

If said concept is incoherent, then the concept can be refused on the face of it. The concept of an existent non-temporal and non-spacial being is no less ridiculous than a square triangle.

You are assuming theists want to scientifically prove god exists when some just use philosophical possibilities but don't assert with certainty.

Philosophical possibilities get you nowhere in the argument, however. The existence of anything that is not logically impossible, can be argued to exist using similar philosophical arguments. 

None of them get you any closer to proving that a god exists. In fact, none of them even predict the probabilities of the existence of a god.  

I'm not arguing in favour of god's existence, I just think some atheist arguments are fallacious and it's possible to improve the position

Fallacious atheist arguments are fallacious, and I will be the first to point them out. The vast majority of atheist arguments are not fallacious, including asking for evidence for any god that a theist believes exists.

[robvalue]

I agree, if something can't be demonstrated to be distinguishable from nothing at all, then it is reasonable to act like it doesn't exist. It's of no consequence to us, until such time that we actually learn anything at all about it. Making shit up doesn't count, sorry.

All we can do is write a definition of it, and give it a name. But defining something doesn't make it real. There's a lot of things I could do that for, and they'd be equally pointless.

The fact that it's such a frequent construction I think points to our species' tendency to want answers, justice and to think someone is in control of things. Also being unable to face our own mortality of course.