Reply #83: No problem. :)

[Meldread]

If you want to figure out how to do more interesting stuff, when you create a new post look above where you type the subject. It says, "HTML use enabled. Use {} instead of <>. HTML lookup table", click the HTML lookup table and you'll have a list of everything you can do.

Onward to the meat of your post:

I do not think comparing the Earth to being flat is comparable to the God issue. I believe that, and I could be wrong, that using such a comparison is an act of engaging the logical fallacy known as Reductio ad absurdum which is Latin for "reduction to the absurd".

The reason I claim that it is fallacious logic is that you are constantly comparing the God issue to absurd examples - examples which can be tested and reasonably proven to be correct or false. Or you are comparing it to examples which have a high likelihood of being false. The difference however is that the God issue, unlike those examples cannot be tested - in fact if God does not exist then it is impossible to test and therefore impossible to prove.

We can test to see if the Earth is flat. We can examine it from outer space and physically look at it. We can use mathematics to figure out the Earth is round without even going into space (in fact that is how the Earth was first discovered to be round). We can have a hypotheses and come to a reasonably firm conclusion. We cannot do that with the idea of a higher being or power - at least not yet and perhaps not ever (if one does not exist).

At best all we have is circumstantial evidence that the Gods that we have yet thought of do not exist, rather than absolutely no God - a God we have yet to mentally conceive - does not exist.

What I would like to know is, if you cannot prove the non-existence of a higher power, how can you be so certain that a higher power that you have yet to conceive does not exist?