Catacomb Subculture

jonboy,

The omphalos hypothesis is pretty much identical to “Last Thursdayism” which is the idea that everything (with past memories, signs of age, structure, etc.) was created as-is last Thursday. The difference is that the omphalos hypothesis uses the Bible story as part of its “what really happened” explanation.

Given that the omphalos hypothesis casts any and all empirical evidence out as being unreliable (“dinosaur fossils were put there to trick us into thinking the Earth is older than it really is”), there is no way to falsify it and also no way to support it. How stories in a 2000 year old book somehow escape being part of the “cover-up” is a question I’ll leave up to those who support the hypothesis to rationalize away.

The argument condenses to “a universe with God would be indistinguishable from a universe without God, therefore believing in him is reasonable.”

Of course, that faith in Monimonika’s buffalo is also reasonable.

The rest of mankind actually has a different definition of “reasonable”.

Wade, do you believe in the God of the Bible because he “could” exist or because there is evidence that suggests he “must” exist? And if there is evidence that suggests he “must” exist, then did he leave that evidence on purpose, or is he just bad at hiding himself?

I believe in the God of the Bible because of existential experience, and not just one, a series of continuing experiences. If you are looking for empirical evidence, I could give you some, but there would be no real reason for you to believe it. As I stated in my post, faith in God is just that; faith. It cannot be attained solely by intellectual ascent.

Why would I not believe empirical evidence. I’m going to assume you mean that you are the only witness to an experience of which there is no empirical evidence remaining. (If this isn’t the case, then I’m still quite interested. If it is the case, then consider that every monotheistic and polytheistic religion throughout history produced people who swore they had empirical experienced miracles. The interesting thing is that never does empirical evidence remain for the rest of us, and also interesting is you don’t believe in their gods.)

I’m somewhat interested even if your experiences left no empirical evidence. I’d like to why they lead you to believe, specifically in the God of the Bible versus any of the thousands of imaginary deities of history and today.

Thank you for replying, Wade. The buffalo analogy just reflects my understanding of your arguments. I will try to reply to your questions as best I presently can.

Wade: “Do you posit that your buffalo is the supreme First Cause?”

What would you say if I answer “Yes”? It doesn’t matter if I did not mention this attribute before, I’m mentioning it now and all you can do is respectfully nod your head and allow me to handle it as a given (just like your mentioning of God “destroying” any human He reveals Himself completely to). Oh, and the answer to your question is, “Yes”.

Wade: “Is your buffalo at the center of the ontological, teleological, moral, anthropic or transcendental arguments?”

Maybe not as a buffalo, but sometimes as a teapot, a dragon, or a pink unicorn. Recently, the buffalo has been appearing in conversations as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I’m apparently the only one so far that has described this being as a buffalo. It’s kind of difficult to describe something that is invisible, and many people (including possibly me) may be getting it wrong (like how someone else’s interpretation of what God wants can be wrong).

Wade: “Have hundreds of billions of people throughout history held the existence of your buffalo to be true and also claimed that he has manifested himself in their lives?”

What does “manifest” even mean here? Does each person that has ever had even a single prayer coincidentally come even semi-true, and attributed God/Jesus/Allah/Yahweh to it, count as having it manifested in their lives?

Does it count as manifesting if the prior belief (most likely taught from childhood) of God/gods/deities/demons/angels leads to people involving God/gods/deities/demons/angels in their thinking when they explain or react to an event or story (even if the event or story did not necessarily imply such beings’ involvement)?

Has the fact that many Greeks and Romans believed in and worshiped their respective gods in their daily lives and made those gods manifest in their lives (such as in statues and celebrations) make the possible existence of those gods reasonable?

Was the attribution of lighting to acts of a Thunder God (who picks his striking victims), and the resulting sacrifices to said Thunder God, a manifestation in people’s lives? Is the possible existence of a Thunder God (who supposedly cares about people’s actions and/or thoughts) therefore reasonable?

And you seem to assume that your personal idea of God is one shared by these supposed hundreds of billions of people. How many of these people do you suppose would agree with your description of a God that cannot reveal Himself completely to a human being without “destroying” (however you want that to mean) that human? How many of these people do you suppose would agree with your description that God has truly given man free will? How many of these people do you suppose would agree with your description that God is a personal God? Do you agree with those who believe that God speaks through the Catholic Pope? Do you agree with those who believe that God insists all human male adherents must be circumcised? Do you agree with those who believe that Jesus was not the Son of God, but instead was a wise man? etc. etc.

The problem I have with this so-called Judeo-Christian God label is that it covers so many different and contradicting beliefs that range from the vague to the specific. Claiming that your personal belief is shared by billions of others (especially across history) who can be labeled Christian in some loose sense is just an abuse of numbers.

I could do something similar and claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Invisible Pink Unicorn followers are in the same camp as me. Just because the beings are different animals/objects does not take away the fact that there are basic shared attributes (especially invisibility). In fact, I just did it when answering your second question. So, we’re both guilty.

Wade: “Also, is your buffalo a finite or infinite force? If finite, we will have to deal not only with proving his existence but proving the existence of the force that constrains it and the force that constrains that force, ad infinitnum.”

Wait, weren’t you the one saying something about not being able to prove your God’s existence, but that it is reasonable to be agnostic about it? Why are you asking me this question when you yourself stated upfront that you won’t apply it to your God? Double standard?

Wade: “If he is an infinite force, well I hate to break it to you, but he is no buffalo.”

Why not? My buffalo is described as being a “buffalo” but it also has attributes that other buffalo do not (like levitation powers and invisibility). Why you suddenly say it is no longer a buffalo just because it is an infinite force (and yes, I will add “is an infinite force” alongside the other attributes, and you can’t stop me) is beyond me. Why can you accept all the other attributes but draw the line at that particular thing? And just because it’s an infinite force does not mean it can’t partly manifest itself as a finite being. Isn’t Jesus something like that (according to the Trinity)?

Wade: “Just pray that your buffalo doesn’t have an affinity for Christian theology. He may attempt a shot at the Incarnation, in which case you’d have a real live buffalo defecating in your garage and eating all of your hot pockets. This is not an ideal situation. Maybe you should lose the invisible buffalo in favor of a straw man. They require a lot less upkeep.”

That last paragraph was unnecessary. Go back to my description of the buffalo. Did it not state, “non-waste producing, and non-sustenance requiring”? Moreover, did it state anywhere that the buffalo was not alive? No, it did not. Just like how Jesus was supposedly a human male yet not in some ways, so is my buffalo a buffalo yet not a buffalo in some ways.

And I see that you’ve added the Incarnation as part of your God definition (assuming that Jesus is God, of course). If Jesus is completely separate from God (i.e. you don’t believe in the Trinity), then I retract the prior sentence.

Now, am I still being reasonable? If not, why not?

Wade,

Are all the experiences personal? I’d take even one. You have my email, but I’m sure you can find one that is publicizable.

Let’s say we agree with your rebuttal to Monimonika that giving superlative attributes to a thing precludes tangible analogs, so that the buffalo can’t really be a buffalo and the FSM can’t really be made of spaghetti. Given this, how can God be “personal”? How can God be “jealous”? How can God become “fully” man and be crucified on a cross, die, and then be raised in a glorified body (wounds intact)? How does God have a son? Why is he three parts in one? How did he have an image to create man in?

It doesn’t stop there. If God is “omnipotent” he is capable of creating beings that do not “sin”. If he is omniscient, then he knows whether his being will sin. If he can guarantee a sin-free heaven, how could he not guarantee it on earth. And if that wasn’t his plan, (i.e he intended man to sin), then how can it be said that he’s not guilty, sinless, and perfect? How can we be sinning against God?

The problem with your rebuttal is that Monimonika is kidding about the Buffalo, but you appear to be serious about your God personality. Your essay permits both and your rebuttal permits neither.

Almost all people will admit feeling the presence of a power higher than themselves at times. The puzzle is the ones who are sure that the presence is an all powerful man-like personality in the sky who tells us how we can eat, who we can make love to, and how we can make love, and created the whole universe with little mankind in mind. Since the book this is based on is utterly unconvincing, the rest of us are wondering if it isn’t just arrogance.

As for the Triune God… I believe this is the only way God can exist. Take, for instance, Allah. Allah is a simple Monad. For Allah to carry traits such as Omnipotence, Omnibenevolence, Omniscience, or any of the other traits commonly associated with God, Allah would be dependent on an object of said traits. A monad god in the Abyss is a restrained god, and a restrained god is no God at all. [other gods are finite by definition]. As for the Triune God, to put it in grammatical terms, it is the being that is subject, verb and object of itself. It needs no object or outlet for it’s love, mercy, benevolence, power, justice, etc. The Triune God in the Abyss is still unrestricted, He is still God.

I really wonder if that really makes sense to you. (God has to be three in one because only then is he unrestricted in the abyss, he can’t be one like Allah because then he would be dependent on an object… huh?). I quote Jim’s comment on another blog, “It’s sad when someone fancies himself to be so intelligent but lacks the courage to truly think”.

This paragraph was written in much the same style as another attempt to explain why everyone else in the world is wrong and doesn’t get it: http://www.timecube.com/

Concerning my rebuttal to Monimonika… My essay does permit both, and as I said in my rebuttal, when we give said traits to Monomonika’s buffalo it ceases to be a buffalo, but rather God revealed in the likeness of a buffalo. You are correct, like the omphalos hypothesis it seems ridiculous but is non-falsifiable. However, when we are speaking of multi-valued logic and intrinsic probability, I hope that you will agree that it is much more reasonable to assume that a creator God in his omniscience, would reveal Himself in a way that coincides with the understanding of his creation rather than an arbitrary manifestation such as an invisible buffalo, an 8 legged blue racoon, Sagan’s Garage-Dwelling Dragon, an orbiting teapot, a flying spaghetti monster, a ham sandwich, or the pink power ranger.

…or a burning bush, or a pillar of smoke or fire, or the son of a virgin, or a godman nailed to a cross, or the creator of the whole universe who revealed himself to his magnum opus (mankind) by having men write stuff in books (but not those other books, just the ones in my Bible, of course). One man’s sacred stories is another man’s absurdity.

There is nothing wrong with contemplating what it would mean to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, or even omnibenevolent, but if you’re telling me that the only possible conclusion to such contemplation is the existence of this Godperson of the Bible, and that you’d be forced to reach this conclusion even if you had no prior knowledge of its description, then I’m calling bullshit right here. I could call it on intuition alone, but to claim that your God is even omnibenevolent is utter nonsense. No God who condemns innocent children to horrible deaths could be considered omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient at once. Either he doesn’t know it’s happening, can’t stop it, or doesn’t care.

Please rebut, and I’ll leave you with the last word.

I meant to convey, and I think I did, that your argument (about why an omnipotent God must be truine) was so vacuous and nonsensical that to post it was an insult to my intelligence (and the intelligence of all who read it). I can see no way in which it “fostered understanding”. I could parse no “idea” therein for me to attack because it lacked meaning.

I’m confident I’m not alone. I’d like someone to either explain to me how that paragraph was reasonable and what it meant, or to nod and say, “yeah, I couldn’t understand what the hell he said either.”

I am only trying to explain why I believe there is a reasonable possibility that God exists

In doing so you also explained why there was a reasonable possibility that the invisible buffalo exists.

You later punted and said that God would want to reveal himself as something that “coincides with the understanding of his creation” rather than a buffalo. I rebutted this too. How does a burning bush or a pillar of smoke coincide better with the understanding of his creation?

Of course there is a possibility that God exists just as you described, but the reasonability of faith in him does not automatically follow. What if we presuppose that God is imaginary? Not only is that possibility at least as reasonable, but it also explains the evidence (most notably that humans throughout history have imagined countless deities all delightfully incompatible with each other).

From here on, I’ll leave it to any readers to assess for themselves whose comments here are intellectually sincere.

I’m back! Sorry for not replying quickly, I had to leave for the weekend to help my sister out in moving to her new place.

First, many many many thanks goes out to Warren for pointing out a few of the inconsistencies in Wade’s rebuttal to me. I may rehash some of what Warren said, but I would like to give my own response to part of Wade’s rebuttal to me and his responses to Warren.

In his rebuttal, Wade asked me, “Have hundreds of billions of people throughout history held the existence of your buffalo to be true and also claimed that he has manifested himself in their lives?” I countered with a semi-rant of questions to Wade over what would count as “manifest” and of how he is being presumptuous about the number of people he is apparently claiming agrees with the existence of his version of God. Wade ignored all of this (which is okay, due to the number of ranty questions) so I will try to simplify it down (and switch some gears, sorry) to a main point and hope Wade will address it.

In his original post, Wade talked about the “brute force” method of arriving at the “reasonable possibility of existence” of his God. When Wade asked me the “hundreds of billions of people” question, the question led me to interpret his “brute force” method to mean the collecting of any and all arguments/claims/excuses/rationalizations/etc. for the existence of God (whatever version of the Judeo-Christian variety it may be), multiplying them by the number of people who believe any part of that collection, and thus gaining some kind of legitimacy through sheer numbers. The argument (as I understand it) is basically: “So many people can’t ALL be wrong, can they?”

Millions of US Americans who have studied US History in US grade schools have (or had) a firm belief that Christopher Columbus, in order to secure funds for his trip to India, had to convince the Queen of Spain and her subjects that the world was spherical, not flat, and that ships will not “fall over the edge”. This is further supported by the belief (by the same Americans) that Christians in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat. Given so many people (and textbooks!) believing this, can it be true that Columbus’s trip in 1492 “finally proved” that the Earth was round?

No, of course not.

All it really took was for Washington Irving’s “History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” written in 1838 to become popular and, despite being fiction, be used as a biographical source in early US History textbooks. In the book there was a scene in which Columbus, who figured that the Earth was actually spherical, was harassed by ignorant priests who believed the Earth to be flat. This scene was widely taken as fact, embellished a bit, and added into the textbooks, of which some are apparently still in use even today. Oh, how easily something that is completely false can be construed as fact by so many (me included) and for so long.

Let’s look back at Wade’s question. “Have hundreds of billions of people throughout history held the existence of your buffalo to be true and also claimed that he has manifested himself in their lives?” Switch out “your buffalo” and place in “the Judeo-Christian God”. I’m not sure about there being exactly “hundreds of billions”, but yeah, there were and are a lot of people who did/do believe in the existence of some form of the Judeo-Christian God.

But how many of them had or have original arguments for this belief? How many of them were or are serious philosophers? How many of them had their claims independently verified? How many of them are retellings of similar (friend of a friend) stories of other people’s experiences? How many of them are simply just those saying, “I’m Christian.” (with the belief in God being implicit, but not actively argued for nor defended)?

A lie does not earn “possible truth points” just because a lot of people believe the lie. Similarly, a weak claim does not gain strength by the number of people who repeat the claim (or similarly weak claims). Unlike the gathering of individual pieces of concrete evidence to support a theory, the gathering of weak, easily refuted arguments does not add up to a decent argument.

Now, onto part of Wade’s response to Warren. Wade does have a point in that my buffalo was constructed specifically to make any indication of its existence impossible to detect, while his God supposedly used indirect means to indicate His existence (let’s just drop the whole charade of Wade’s God being “akin to the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition”. It’s obvious that Wade’s God IS the Judeo-Christian God in every single way in the first place, so stop the pretending, Wade). It is true that my buffalo does not share this strangely human need of Wade’s God to be acknowledged and respected(?) by humans. Wade seems to try and justify this attributed need of God’s as being the way we humans try to interpret His motives through the only kind of thoughts we have, human thoughts.

So, Wade’s arguments for the necessity of God to make certain events happen (like making a burning bush appear) are FIRMLY based on these human traits of God. Yet, Wade also claims that these traits are merely interpretations of our feeble human minds in response to God’s actions (like the appearance of a burning bush). …Is it just me, or does something seem circular here?

Oh, and the Triune God vs Monad God thing doesn’t make that much sense to me either. All I can get is that supposedly existence can only be achieved if one being points at another being and acknowledges that the pointed-at being exists. The first being gets to exist when the second being points back and acknowledges the first one’s existence. Allah, being by himself, apparently can’t exist because of this. Skipping the Duad God, the Triune God wins at Existence according to Wade. I wonder what Wade thinks about the famous quote, “I think, therefore I am.”?

Wade,

You said you would leave me with the last word and here it is. But if you’d like to reply, you are more than welcome

I debated whether or not to respond for a bit, but alas, I feel compelled to continue. However, I’ve decided to take a different approach.

Let me first clear up the ad-hominem claim. I first stated that your statement did not make sense, then based on it not making sense, suggested that Jim’s assessment of your courage to think was accurate. In no way did I claim that your argument was false for any other reason than it didn’t make sense.

So strictly speaking, the “attack” was not ad-hominem. However it was indeed a personal jab, but one that I stand by. Allow me to explain my perspective.

I would imagine that many, if not all, of the critics to this post are former Christian apologists. I am. As such, it was imperative that we have rational support for our faith in case we were confronted by unbelievers so that we could give an answer. We listened to preachers, teachers, professors, and books by self-proclaimed thinkers who all claimed that belief in God was reasonable. We badly needed this reassurance because secular and simpler explanations for the universe began to emerge with ever increasing frequency. We found what we were looking for. We learned from these sources to say things like, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”, and “if God revealed himself to you, you wouldn’t need faith.” In answer to things like “Why is faith important?” We learned to respond, “God works in mysterious ways” or “Who are we to understand God”. If they ask, “how can God die?” we say, “Jesus was a man”. If they say “but I thought he was God” we say, “he’s both.” If they say “half God, half man?” we say “no 100% man and 100% God”. If they say “but that’s 200%” we say, “We can’t comprehend it with our human minds.” If they say, “that sounds a lot like bullshit” we say, “look here at Abbott’s flatland…”.

We believed it was our duty to defend this faith at all costs and so we thought we were doing God’s work by heading off doubt with these answers.

Eventually we noted the sheer amount of effort necessary to defend the Bible. We wondered why the purported special revelation of a perfect, omniscient God, required so many thousands of books by men to explain it.

In other words, we doubted. We became skeptical. We asked ourselves, “what if God were as imaginary as all the other thousands of gods throughout history?” The answer is that not only does a universe without God look exactly the same as it did with God, other things for which we used to appeal to the “mysteriousness” of God to explain became simple and clear. Why does God heal cancer patients today but never amputees? Because he only exists in the imagination of his believers. We looked back at our former selves and were embarrassed to see our lack of courage to take the “faith” leash off of our intelligence and really think.

I want you to take note that this is how our knowledge works in all non-religious areas. We take a look at all the possible explanations. If there is more than one possible explanation, we discard those that are needlessly complex. We no longer need to resort to demon possession to explain epilepsy, schizophrenia or illness. We have much more adequate explanations for these phenomena.

…If faith could be attained solely by reason and correct evaluation of the evidence, it would not be faith at all…

Lastly, my final appeal to you, is that you take a look at faith itself. See that by definition it is not reasonable.

If faith is righteousness, as the Bible says, then few need much thought to answer who the nineteen most righteous people were on 9/11/2001. If one answers that only faith in the correct deity is righteousness, then this must all just be a game of chance, and with all the possible choices, we should all assume that the statistical likelihood is that we’ve guess wrong and are damned.

I had hoped you would see my response as an appeal to see things from the perspective of another rather than some sort of insult.

You’ve resorted to labels and appeals to authority. You label me an empiricist and yourself a mystic, implying that they equally valid philosophies and therefore I’m an ass for suggesting the possibility that you might be imagining strange, complex possible realities to support your ideas rather than accepting the more simple explanations.

Newton was also an alchemist. A modern global positioning system proves that his equations were imperfect. Still he’s respected as a great mind because his achievements were viewed in the light of someone who lived in the 17th century and was working against the pressure of a religious tyranny of that time.

(Also as an aside, Newton thought the trinity was a deliberate attempt to corrupt Christianity.)

I want to point out that in practice, you put your chips down on empiricism rather than mysticism. When you go to a surgeon, you expect him to use technology based on empirical science, to use real anesthesia etc. Imagine lying on the operating table under the surgeon’s scalpel, asking why you see no anesthesiologist and hearing the response, “Lord, please help Wade not to feel this pain. Wade, try to take deep breaths and imagine yourself in the presense of God.” Would you have enough respect for the surgeon to stay on the table?

But when it comes to your eternal soul (should such a thing exist at all) you claim to put your chips down on mysticism and blast anyone who would question the intellectual sincerity thereof.

I’m wondering, are mystics not required to demonstrate some sort of justification for their conclusions? I mean if you claim that demon possession is real, for instance, shouldn’t you have a justification for making that claim? Or would being a mystic make you immune to that requirement? I’m honestly asking.

You admonished me for resorting to labels, though you first labeled me an intellectual coward.

The problem with labels is that they allow someone to dismiss an argument without meeting the burden of arguing against it – something I think you did when you dismissed my explanation for my conclusions as simply empiricism vs. mysticism.

The term, “intellectual coward”, which I never uttered, is different from “empiricist” and “mystic” in that it has implicit meaning. That is that it clearly indicates a simple concept, namely, “lack of courage to think deeply” (in which you’ll find the exact words I actually used in the first place – so not a label, a description). Whereas “empiricist” and “mystic” are vaguely defined categories of epistemology and not clear and simple.

However, it appears to me that you have labeled the theistic point of view as “lacking the courage to think”.

Do you perceive thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Berkeley, Leibniz, Descartes, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, and others as “lacking the courage to think” because of their acceptance of the mystical?

I think I’ve been misunderstood. Theology or mysticism in general is not the problem. It is the apparent unwillingness to admit that there is no support for belief in the existence of the God of the Bible without first presupposing his existence.

It has been demonstrated ad nauseum already that “could exist” does not amount to support that is any more reasonable than support for an invisible buffalo. (Granted, one can objectively say that an omnipotent deity is more reasonable than an omnipotent deity in the form of a buffalo seeing as the latter implies the former, but adds more specificity – nevertheless your omnipotent deity was many times more specific than the buffalo.)

The one time you appear to appeal to something other than “could exist”, your argument for why a triune deity can be the only true deity just appears to be entirely subjective. (e.g. a monad like Allah would have to be dependent on another object in order to be omnipotent, omniscient, etc… no explanation for this constraint is given. A triune god doesn’t need an outlet for his love (why?) so he is still God – so it is pointed out that this must be true of a dual God and your answer is that a triune god seems to express more unity to you than a dual god which is just too polarized, providing no explanation about why that would be or why a dual god can’t just be “two in one” like the triune god is, or why four isn’t better than three)

So it has nothing to do with mysticism, except that it was whipped out like a trump card when the lack of support for some of these arguments was noted.

I read through Tractatus today. It’s not a one-time, easy read, but on the surface the case he appears to eventually make is that there is no absolute by which to map a proposition onto reality and so in the end he appears to conclude that he has either concluded nothing, or nothing that can be communicated. I’ll need you to help me understand which part lends itself to your argument and how.

If you haven’t read Sam Harris (The End of Faith), I think maybe you should as he is pro rational mysticism, while ardently arguing against faith in general. I admit I have not read the book, myself.

Are you a biblical creationist?

I hate it when people drop into my blog, toss a hand grenade, and never return. So I am coming back to say … I should have read all the other comments before tossing my hand grenade! Monimonika and Warren are doing a much more thorough job of presenting the same arguments I intended to present.

By the way, I was referring to Nadine Gordimer, who was a literary complement to some ideas presented by Wittgenstein, who it appears you have read much more than me, so I will shut up about him.

One comment re: the Buffalo arguement. Wade asks: “Have hundreds of billions of people throughout history held the existence of your buffalo to be true and also claimed that he has manifested himself in their lives?”

First, I think your number is extremely exaggerated, but that’s irrelevant. I could name many *many* beliefs that were adamantly held by large numbers of people that were proven wrong. Read Charles MacKay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” A scientist in 1700 could have made the same assertion about alchemy and been smashingly wrong. So scratch that question off the buffalo interrogation. The argument by brute force holds no water.

But really, the entire line of questioning about the buffalo is not necessary. It’s pitting one imaginary being against another. None of the attributes you apply to your imaginary being make it any less imaginary. The whole point of the FSM, the teacup, and the buffalo arguments are to indicate how a tautological argument such as yours is easy to create. Yes, it’s a straw man, and a valid point. I think it shows how faith as you describe is unreasonable.

After reading further, I can see why you wouldn’t want to broadcast your personal experiences here. However, it really doesn’t matter what those experiences were (to us) because unspoken or spoken, they won’t make your argument any more valid. You stated this yourself so this point is moot.

In the end, if you’re saying that it’s reasonable to believe in God because God cannot be disproven, then you are saying it’s reasonable to believe in *anything* that cannot be disproven. OK, your argument is sound based on that criteria. I place a higher standard on what is reasonable, however.

But really, my comments about having the “courage to think” were meant sincerely. You obviously are quite intelligent, but have chosen to focus your intelligence on a preconception that is completely false. If you had more courage, you would start with a blank slate, and I believe your deductions would lead you to a different set of beliefs.

I don’t ever want to descend to name-calling so please don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I, too, was a devout Christian for decades. Logic would never have led me away from it, but emotions did. Then, once away from it and able to think clearly, logic showed me how wrong I had been all along.

So yes, experiences are important. It seems to me that you have not experienced anything (yet) that has imbued you with the courage to seriously question your faith.