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skepticscott

(13,029 posts)
Sat Aug 4, 2012, 09:06 AM Aug 2012

Hogwash

The "gods" of the vast majority of religious believers in the world are claimed to influence, and be influenced by, events in the physical world. Those "gods" are absolutely amenable to scientific, rational inquiry. If a god is claimed to answer prayers and heal sick people, that claim (and by extension, the likelihood of the existence of such a god) is empirically testable. If a god is claimed to have created the whole world and everything in it 10,000 years ago and to to cover the world with a flood, that's testable too.

If a "god" exists only in the minds and imaginations of his/her/its believers, and if a religion made NO truth claims about the physical world, then this person's arguments might have some merit, but that case is pretty much where atheists are right now. We lack belief in real, physical existence of gods, not in their imaginary existence (which they clearly do have).

This is nothing but tortured special pleading by someone who doesn't believe in any gods, but is afraid of the label "atheist", and who relishes the intellectual pomposity of "agnosticism" as a remnant of their days in college philosophy classes.

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