How can we know we are looking at a god if we don’t know any of god’s actual attributes? I don’t think we can. But that’s not because I’m being circular or difficult. It’s because we lack a referent in reality to allow us to tell the difference between true and untrue claims about attributes of god. This situation, created by theists, who cannot agree on a metric to differentiate true claims from false claims about gods, is not a problem that can be laid at the feet of atheists. When someone asks me “what evidence would convince you?,” they have already invented a situation where it’s all but impossible to answer, because I don’t know what a god is. There are some vague notions, but nothing specific and agreed upon to the point of usefulness. But bring me your external referent, and then start making your claims, and at that point you and I can compare your claims to a real god and make some determinations about their truth values. Without that, though, it’s claims predicated on claims, predicated on more claims, with no way of determining what is true—for thousands of years, as we have already seen.


http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/2014/07/03/determining-the-attributes-and-effects-of-gods/

The pastor and two members of a Corona church pleaded guilty Monday to state charges of beating and threatening the life of a 13-year-old boy, who was forced to dig his own grave, authorities said.

Lonny Lee Remmers, 56, Nicholas James Craig, 24, and Darryll Duane Jeter Jr., 30, tortured the boy in the church-run group home where he lived, according to a witness report in affidavits for search warrants.


-snip--

The March 2012 incidents included Craig and Jeter driving the victim to the desert and forcing him to dig his own grave. They then made him get in and threw dirt on him. They were responding to Remmers' instruction to "scare" the boy, according to the affidavits.

While the boy was showering, one of the men rubbed salt into the cuts on his back, according to Steven Larkey, who lived in the group home and provided the witness report in the affidavit. He told investigators he could hear the boy screaming and saw blood all over the shower the next day. The victim was later tied to a chair with zip ties and placed in the shower. Mace was sprayed on his face, causing it to bleed, and he was not allowed to rinse off for about 30 minutes, according to the victim's account in the affidavit.

At a Bible study later that evening at Remmers' home, Remmers asked the boy to sit in the middle of the group and then squeezed his nipple with pliers. The boy, his mother and sister were members of Remmers' church. His mother and sister lived in a women's group home, but the boy said he had been moved to the men's home as a disciplinary action.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pastor-guilty-beating-boy-20140707c-story.html