I read and understood it, Mooby. You never mentioned becoming closer to the "switch" you described. Instead, you described in the second sentence of that paragraph how learning more about our human ignorance solidifies your theistic position. Which is what I addressed.
Failure to come closer to deconverting does not make one a stronger theist, just as failure to become a strong atheist does not send one on a path that will ultimately lead them to theism. Failure to move from 3 to 5 on the Dawkins scale is not the same as moving from 3 to 1.
I never said learning about our human ignorance solidifies my theistic position. I said that learning about my own ignorance makes me less likely to claim God's nonexistence (which you might recognize as strong atheism.) My point being that were I to ever deconvert, the change would more likely be in practice than any real paradigm shift.
Yes, and 2 professionals with the same batting average, OPS, slugging percentage, walks, hits and RBI's could only be the same player, right?
Before answering that, I still get the same deal, right? This one: "Just keep going like that for as many comparisons as you like"
I could list you a whole host of made up crap that could be different between the 2 deities (just like your deity is a bunch of made up crap), but still the scenario I gave you could be real, right? How would you distinguish what's really going on? You'd have to prove that ONLY your God was responsible. Go ahead and try. Feel free.
1. We have primary source evidence via your direct admission that your creation's qualities consist of "made up crap." Do we have the
same level of evidence that God's qualities consist of "made up crap?"
2. If your proposed being and God are completely indistinguishable other than name, then there's no distinction to be made as a name is a label and not an intrinsic quality of a thing, so the two are transitively the same, and we must simply clarify the label.
In the real world, if I said my neighbor mowed my lawn, and someone claimed that it was my best friend who mowed my lawn, we could find evidence based ways to figure out which one did it, right? How could you differentiate what God did versus what Phlegmorph did as a result of hearing my prayer?
If your best friend and neighbor share
every characteristic, including age, height, address, exact absolute location at the time your lawn was mowed, etc., then by the transitive property your neighbor and friend are the same person and there is no need to differentiate.
You're committing the
masked man fallacy.Also, with your hypothetical example, you're adding the extra step of a meta-prayer. Thus, you're relying on the answering of two prayers with the second being conditional on the first, rather than just the first. From what I remember of probability theory, conditional probability is calculated differently than the probability for one element.
Wrong Mooby. In my scenario, God doesn't exist but Phlegmorph does. There is only one prayer that actually has any bearing on the outcomes. Mine. Which he obviously answers every single time without fail. There is no condition in which Phlegmorph decides he will no longer answer mine.
You're ignoring the probability he will answer the other prayer. Any way you slice it, you're adding extra variables.
Also, now that your scenario changes the probability of existence, "If all the numbers are the same" no longer holds.
Tell you what then Mooby. If you can't understand that the variables that are relevant to the outcome would be exactly the same, come up with a formula and variables and I'll make up Phlegmorphs data.
I never claimed to have such a formula. It is
you who claimed that the probabilities were calculable per "the formula I used." I expressed interest in your calculations ("I'm interested in how you calculated/estimated the probabilities") precisely because I do not have them on hand, and would like to educate myself. In fact, I implied earlier that it might be easier to just avoid calculating the probabilities altogether and simply run an experiment in a parallel universe.
Are you suggesting here that you have not, in fact, found a way to calculate or estimate the probabilities?
You don't HAVE to be smart to be an atheist. In fact, I don't know if I'm smarter than you or not in the grand scheme of things. But intelligence LEADS to atheism in much the same way that being a pilot leads to being able to land a plane. Or being a biologist leads you to understanding and accepting evolution.
So you're comparing it to direct procedural training and prerequisite education? Those aren't even the "same way" to each other.
What evidence do you have that "intelligence leads to atheism" in either of those ways, or in any way?
But given the sheer fact of how little you and I actually know, and the fact that we can literally come up with trillions of possible truths about our universe, and the fact that so few things are ACTUALLY true about our universe, and the miniscule evidence of the Christian version of God which is equal to the miniscule evidence of all the other versions of god, in conjunction with the billions of believers that are equally convinced of their positions that are mutually exclusive to yours, believing that any one version is more correct than any other is the pretty ridiculous.
Mutually exclusive? I see no evidence for this, and such a notion is specifically rejected within my own religion's teachings.
But your not simply an agnostic theist, Mooby. If I remember, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but you're Catholic. So you say... I don't know if God is real, and I can't prove that it is or isn't, but I believe it is and I believe it's this exact version. I'd feel more respect toward you if you were a deist, but Catholic isn't deist.
"Theist" is a blanket term that in its most general sense describes only belief in at least one deity. In its more narrow sense, theism is contrasted to deism as having different basic views on gods' relation to observed reality. Yes, many agnostic theists have been deists, but deism isn't some form of God-lite theism. It's its own set of belief systems about a specific type of deity, just as theism is its own set of belief systems about a specific type of deity.
One of the IGI members made a series of blog posts describing the differences between the belief systems;
here's the one on the different types of deism. Agnostic deists also say, "I don't know if God is real, and I can't prove that it is or isn't, but I believe it is and I believe it's this exact version," it's just a different version than theists (in the more narrow sense of "theist.")
So why would you have more respect for me if I were a deist? Simply because it's more palatable to your atheism?
I am confused by them as well.
Why? Can you not fathom that intelligent people can hold different beliefs than you?
I noticed you didn't list any Muslims, Hindu's, Jews, or people of other religions. They can be really smart too, and they believe different things than you. Does that confuse you?
The answer's more simple then that:
When I Googled for intelligence lists and high IQ lists, I did not see any Muslims, Hindus, Jews, or people of other religions at the top of those lists. I found someone who was quoted talking about "spirit," but I left him off the list due to some sites claiming his IQ was self-estimated. I also found someone who had one site say he believed in God and another say he had "no signs of being atheist" (whatever that means), but no direct quotes for him so I excluded him. I found a few others who have never given public indication of their beliefs (or lack thereof), so I excluded them.
I didn't check every person on every list, and some lists had people with Asian or Arabic names that could very well be members of non-Christian religions. But I only looked at the tops of lists, those who had held world records for IQ tests, and those who have been billed as "smartest X in Y."
I personally have known many intelligent Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, and have never felt particularly confused in my interactions with them. Should I?
