One sentence trump for everyone

[reverendjeremiah]

I have a one sentence trump that I think really puts things into perspective when it comes to theists AND atheists. I want to give it a run and see what this community thinks of it, so here goes:

The one sentence trump:

"How do you know that Satan isnt fooling you?"

Theists, please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Satan isnt fooling you. Same with atheists and agnostic, please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Satan isnt fooling you.

It doesnt have to be Satan either. It can be any God or Goddess. Loki for example. Loki is a mischevious and flippant deity.

I already know what the atheists are going to say. They are going to say "The burdon of proof is on the person making the positive claim". True. I agree 100%. The description of Loki is a mischevious deity, and could surely (if he existed) make it so that no burdon of proof could ever be leveled for his existence to us mere mortals, yet still exist.

*Remember, we arent talking about a benevolent deity. We are talking about a malevolent deity who created this entire cosmos merely for his own amusement, who purposefully inspired people to create millions of differing religious beliefs just to confuse us more. Loki could have easily created the universe last thursday and gave it the appearance of ancient age and created humans with false memories that span back further than last thursday. This malevolent deity purposefully plays tricks on the minds of its creations, therefore what you think is scientific evidence for Dinosaurs was planted by Loki in the ground last thursday.

Dont hold back now. Let me have it. Give me your best shots.

[Minimalist]

Loki's got a great hat.

[reverendjeremiah]

Yeah. That pic is one of my favs. Loki is also about the closest I will ever come to having a favorite God. He still sucks ass, but he is much more interesting than all those other boring wannabes.

So how do you know you arent being fooled by Loki?

[Watson]

I don't.

[theVOID]

Prove beyond a reasonable doubt? Okay, easy.

Belief in the existence of Satan is entirely unjustified, this is the same as saying that it is in no way reasonable to believe that Satan exists. If it is in no way reasonable to believe that Satan exists then, beyond all reasonable doubt, I can say that Satan is not fooling me.

Satisfied?

[ozgoat]

"How do you know that Satan isnt fooling you?"

Because you're fooling me, not Satan.

Anyway, I spend most of my life fooling myself, I don't need anyone else to do it.

[Zen Badger]

How do we know god isn't fooling us?

[Violet]

---

Actually, I believe the Gods of the Vigil are fooling us... Regulos is being pretty damn honest about wanting to kill everything.

If my toon had any opinion, she'd say that those baleful gods covet the sourcestone our planet is rich with because it feeds them power. If the those gods feed on sourcestone then likely so do the gods of Vigil, so of course they don't want us figuring out how to use it to power our creations. They are jealous gods and don't want us to join them. They're afraid we will become them. So some of those gods dress up pretty and pretend to care about our world and ascend those that will fight for them but not question them. Do they ascend the most righteous and worthy to fight their fight? No, they ascend people regardless of their moral compasses as long as they can control them and use them to turn on their fellow Telarans, Telarans who have figured out how to bypass the gods and use the sourcestone for ourselves.

We are no more than chess pieces between the Gods of Vigil and the Baleful gods. And our world is ripped apart while we fight this civil war rather than turning against those that fuel the fire with our deaths.

Where were these gods when Telara fell in the future time-line?

There are bloody reasons I could only be Ascended as one of the Defiant... the Gods of the Vigil would certainly have never brought such a being as myself back.

Trust me, Satan and Loki aren't wasting their time trying to fool me, and have better things to do than fool me, and are not fooling me. I know this, because the gods of the Vigil won't give me a list of their names and an explanation of who they are... and this is because they are aware that my full eventual intent (after beating back the significantly more powerful Blood Storm) is to kill them.

They aren't just going to give me their names and tell me about themselves and where they live to make my job all the easier: that isn't the style of the Vigil, and at best this 'Loki' or 'Satan' were invented to throw me off my course. Not unlike that time they successfully lured me away from the Iron Pines.

Damn elevators.

---

[azharrison]

The premise makes the assumption that Satan is real. Besides, what is he lying about? Astronomy? Biology? Witch hunts? God? Other God's? Human history? I don't get how that question helps understand anything.

[theVOID]

It doesn't assume he is real, it assumes that he could be real and fooling us into believing he isn't. The question is "Can we show beyond reasonable doubt that he is not fooling us" - It's akin to the New Evil Demon Problem, a common challenge in Epistemology.