Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

Ghost elephants.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Ghost elephants.

Which are as non-existent as Klors accounts.

[Deesse23]

Ghost elephants.

Which are as non-existent as Klors accounts.

Just another sad example of either being too stupid or too dishonest to participate in the most simple way of reasoning.

Thinking that not having detected elephants in your room, yet, is most probably a problem with your detector. Jesus F. Christ. 
Same for burden of proof, difference between believing and knowing and other very simple things. Witnessing how types like this try to desperately try to make sense of their unreasonable beliefs sometimes literally gives me headaches.

[arewethereyet]

This thread makes me think of Heffalumps and Woozles.

Heffalumps and Woozles are very confusal.

When the kids were little and things without cause happened, we started blaming Heffalumps and Woozles.  In fact, we still do.

[Fake Messiah]

The late Ernest Becker in his award winning book The denial of death, brilliantly expressed this idea : "when the awareness dawns that has always been blotted out by frenetic, ready-made activity, we see the transmutation of repression redistilled, so to speak, and the fear of death emerges in pure essence. This is why people have psychotic breaks when repression no longer works".

So a theist who opened a thread claiming that not believing in God will make you crazy has a psychotic break. Can't say that I am surprised.

[Ranjr]

Looks like I'll never get that master's level discussion of Bayesian Analysis and the likelihood that something that has never been detected exists.

Dang.

[polymath257]

But there are times when absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. For example, if I fail to detect an adult african elephant in my room, I can conclude that there is no adult african elephant in my room. 

Nope, you can't, if you fail to detect elephants in your room, this just means you failed to detect them, nothing more. I mean, most accidents in life happen because people are hilariously bad at detecting things.......?

Besides, I can say the same thing about quarks, or electrons : I fail to detect any trace of quarks or electrons in my room, they have no distinguishable form, or smell, or color, or flavor, they're undetectable even if one uses the most sophisticated microscope available, and science tells us they're extremely small, very suspicious.... So I conclude there are no electrons and quarks in my room..

I'll anticipate one possible objection : you may say there are experiments that can be done to show electrons are real, but this is irrelevant in this context. You're telling us that you, personally -not experiments, or machines, or other people-, couldn't detect an elephant, and from that fact alone, you allowed yourself to come to the hasty conclusion that the elephant doesn't exist. This is obviously a mistake.

And again, the difference is that if there is an elephant in my room, I would detect it. That is why my non-detection is proof of non-existence.

If you had the correct equipment to detect an electron reliably and did not detect one, THEN you could reason that there is no electron.

But going deeper, if the detection is impossible even in principle, what does it even mean to say that something exists? I could then equally well argue that undetectable unicorns exist in my room. Who is to say otherwise?

If you provide plausible reasons for the unicorns existence -aside from detection-, then we have to assess these reasons on their own merits.
Some centuries ago, most discoveries in modern physics were completely undetectable, even in principle........

The plausible reasons for unicorns would all be based on some observations and the actual existence would not be demonstrated until the unicorns themselves were detected.

No, the discoveries of modern physics were NOT undetectable in principle. We simply didn't know enough to either suspect they could be done or how to do them. There is a huge difference between that and the type of undetectability proposed for deities and the supernatural. For the first, it is a matter of ignorance. For the latter, it is a matter of principle.

[Jehanne]

[Angrboda]

That's easy!

[polymath257]

He did ask for a Master's level discussion. This is much more basic than that.