I wanted to post a final comment on said thread; if this is no longer possible, so be it.

What happened to the comment function on the “The single most incompetent logical argument ever made” thread?

(especially when it is I who is accused of reasoning purely on an emotive level.)

I’m going to bow out. I have adequately shown my point. That your beliefs are no more sensible than a water-diviner’s, your excuses for a complete lack of objective evidence no less ridiculous, and your refusal to acknowledge the evidence no less biased and pig-headed.

Feel free to come at me with actual evidence, Stuart. But without any, don’t expect to be taken any more seriously than those water-diviners.

Another bastard version of what I actually said, here: God reveals enough of himself to those he knows will freely accept his love and mercy, and is under no obligation to reveal any more of himself to those whom he knows will reject him if he did.

Rather convenient isn’t it. God reveals himself only to those who will accept him.

Sorry, I did not mean to make a thinly veiled insult: Your beliefs are quackery Stuart.

In the process of correcting your bad theology – which is a distortion of my good theology, I was telling you of a possibility that makes things internally consistent. Those things, in this case, were divine hiddeness and evidence for his existence.

The move to making things ‘internally consistent’ is just a move to avoid having to have any actual evidence. Rather convenient isn’t it. God reveals himself only to those who will accept him.

If your trustworthy wife told you she spent the afternoon window shopping, but she of course did not have any evidence of this, it would actually be foolish not to believe it.

Completely and willfully deceptive. This is nowhere near the situation of ‘god’.

(1)….

More completely irrelevant stuff.

You can’t give any impartially verifiable evidence for god, Stuart. All you have are sad excuses for why god evades detection.

Rather convenient isn’t it. God reveals himself only to those who will accept him.

Another bastard version of what I actually said, here: God reveals enough of himself to those he knows will freely accept his love and mercy, and is under no obligation to reveal any more of himself to those whom he knows will reject him if he did.

This was a response to your parenthetical example: “like god is hiding from impartial observation,” which is something I did not say. In fact from the first I have said God can be empirically verified, and evidence for Him can be assessed with impartial (if impartial be possible at all) observation.

This is called the Confirmation Bias. . . [deletion of thinly veiled insult] And you try to hide your confirmation bias under the name ‘theology’.

In the process of correcting your bad theology – which is a distortion of my good theology, I was telling you of a possibility that makes things internally consistent. Those things, in this case, were divine hiddeness and evidence for his existence.

- – - – - – - – - – - –

I merely mean that where there is no evidence it is foolish to believe in something.

Of course, I think there is good evidence for God’s existence, so believing in God is not foolish by this axiom. But this axiom is not entirely true. If your trustworthy wife told you she spent the afternoon window shopping, but she of course did not have any evidence of this, it would actually be foolish not to believe it.

and if it is not foolish to believe in something there is evidence.

You could instead say “it is wise to believe in something if there is evidence.” Which is not entirely true either.

(1) Suppose all the evidence points to you committing the murder. There is video footage of you walking into the alley. There are witnesses placing you at the scene of the crime at the approximate time of the murder. There are your fingerprints on the revolver that killed him. There is blood all over your cloths. One person even heard you cursing and yelling angrily over the victim’s body. Yet you knew you did not commit the murder. All the evidence points to you, yet your experience of walking into the alley for a cigarette break, picking us a lost revolver, then discovering a body, kneeling over him to check if he was dead and getting blood all over your clothes, and then realising it was a guy who owed you money and you lost your temper at him, is good reason, at least for you, to disbelieve what all the evidence points to.

(2) I think of the other thread where the Problem of Evil is mentioned. This problem uses the existence of natural and personal evil in this world, as evidence that God is either not all-good, or not-all powerful, and since he must be both does not exist. But on analysis this is not good evidence – for several reasons. One such reason that I consider it not good evidence is because in order for there to be actual evil, there needs to be an objective standard of goodness which can only be grounded in God. So in order to even form the critique the atheistic objector has to borrow from the resources of theism.

I didn’t make that claim. I would say rather that God reveals enough of himself to those he knows will freely accept his love and mercy, and is under no obligation to reveal any more of himself to those whom he knows will reject him if he did. God knows the perfect balance between divine hiddeness and revelation of the divine such that the maximal amount of people will freely accept him, the minimal amount of people freely reject him, and that none who reject him do so solely on the basis of lack of evidence, and none who accept him do so solely on the basis of too much evidence forcing them.

Rather convenient isn’t it. God reveals himself only to those who will accept him. This is called the Confirmation Bias. All pseudo-quackery uses it, because otherwise they’d have to count the misses as well as the hits. And you try to hide your confirmation bias under the name ‘theology’.
If god came to me, I’d accept him. Why wouldn’t I?! It’d be great to know there is a benevolent being on my side and that for everything there is a purpose.

False. You could make a case for evidence being what is needed to know something exists, but actual existence is not dependant on evidence.

Yes, okay, sure. I merely mean that where there is no evidence it is foolish to believe in something, and if it is not foolish to believe in something there is evidence.