to think it is rude to persistently refer to God/Allah/etc. as an "imaginary friend"

[AtheneNoctua]

even after asked not to by several posters who have stated they found it offensive.

It's very difficult to get into "theological debate" when this requires one to have made the intuitive leap, impossible if you are being rational, that there is a god.

It's like (and forgive another analogy, which may seem reductive, but I find them helpful) being asked to study unicorn-ology properly or to investigate issues of scale thickness and flame intensity in dragons. It doesn't address the central, key issue that the damn things don't exist.

The principle of parsimony is very simple - it's like Occam's Razor, essentially. The simplest explanation is the most likely.

A properly-regulated double-blind study would surely show that there is no such thing as spontaneous "healing". There may even have been such research. I'll have a look.

You can show correlation all you like between doing certain rituals and what happens to people after them - meaningless unless you take account of everything else that person has done. It's not causation. Statistically that is very big mistaken assumption. (It's like plotting house prices against purchases of real ale, seeing similar graphs in the two and saying there is a direct link between home-ownership and real-ale-drinking.)

Otherwise, if someone has a headache and takes both a peppermint and a paracetamol, and an hour later the headache is gone, you could ignore the paracetamol and say, "look, that person had a peppermint and their headache is gone. Peppermints cure headaches." If they had a peppermint and no paracetamol and the headache went, it's still not proof of magic peppermints. Did they lie down in a dark room for a bit? Did they have a herbal tea? Did they have some coffee (it might have been a caffeine-deprivation headache)? Was it just one of those headaches that go away in the end on their own?

UD, do you think it is possible that we are all a computer simulation? There is no evidence for this, but certain scientists seem to think it is possible, even likely. Are you absolutely positive, certain, that this is not the case? In science, many things are as yet unknown. We are not talking about unicorns or fairies we are talking about the big unanswered questions of how the universe came to be, how our planet was created, how we evolved from mammals. We are steadily discovering the answers only to find more unknown elements, dark matter, quarks, strangelets, etc. The only thing i don't get with your argument is that you dismiss the any possiblity of not knowing when it comes to God. I am not even asking you to consider the possibility of a God. I am asking you to consider that you don't know if there is one.
Whether there is a God or not anyway can be [dare I say it] almost a redundant question. For me Christ's teaching stand on their own without the support of a divine creator, although my mind is open to the divine, to mystery, to our spiritual selves and to things we don't know. But analogies containing fairies/unicorns/marshmallow man are irritating because they fail to recognise the weight and relevance of New Testament scriptures to our social and personal evolution.

I;m still waiting for actual evidence of these miracles, properly recorded in a respected journal with data and peer review.

I have absolutely no idea if the universe is a computer simulation. But I will continue to lead my life as if it is not - as I have no evidence otherwise.

I actually agree with you about Jesus if we are talking about him as a historical figure (the actual name can be disputed but there is enough evidence of someone called Christus or Jesus Christus or something like it wandering round 1st century Palestine - as much, I gather, as there is for Julius Ceasar. But then it was not an uncommon name.) Jesus's teachings make sense when you boil them down to "be nice to each other", which is basically what he was on about. I think you'll find most atheists have no argument there - it's only the necessity of a divine dimension that we argue is unnecessary.

I'm not sure that I am "dismissing" God in quite those terms, unless you agree that a Christian also "dismisses" Thor, Ra and Apollo. I am merely weighing the current evidence and finding it lacking. If other evidence comes forward I will weigh it up. In that sense it is exactly like any other supernatural claim, from crystal healing to Bigfoot.

And again, I've been shown the problem of using an analogy to clarify my position. As soon as you do so, someone says, "but were not talking about that."

Monotheism, uqd.

I think it's funny that after all this time we are still asked how we can be so sure there is no god. I don't know any atheists who take that position. If I say 'we are waiting for a reason to be produced to think there is one' will I be accused of repeating the same argument?

I also note that most people avoid dealing with the "but you dismiss all the other gods such as thor" issue.

It goes round and round and comes back to

1. god is real because I have faith and I have faith because god is real

2. 'stop comparing us to fairies, thor etc as they are just made up silliness and it's insulting'

Sorry, what about monotheism? We are discussing monotheism therefore that's different? Or what?

The analogies I use only have their limitations if you want to argue that the Judeo-Christian god (which is mostly what we are discussing here) is somehow "special" or "different" from these other gods, demons, spiritual beings, mythical concepts, etc. That gets into the realm of "special pleading" and so it finds little sympathy with me.

If you re not addressing someone who has already "bought into" the Judeo-Christian god, we might as well be talking about the Great Green Arkleseizure (Copyright Douglas Adams) or the Spaghetti Monster, or other "imaginary friends" (to bring us back to the topic). This is the point. It's a very straightforward concept and yet it's one that Christians, especially, always seem to struggle to grasp.

I liked "no longer culturally appropriate". That's a nice expression isn't it.

Does it mean "too silly for these modern times"?

There are plenty of other gods who are more current. Some you could say were other names for yours, but some are so wildly different I seriously doubt that christians can believe in them all.

"Cultural appropriateness" is a huge minefield. But I find some potential areas of agreement there, in that I'd argue that belief in god(s) is primarily culturally indoctrinated. Without someone having explained to you what the Christian god is, you can't find and define it on your own. I don't know anyone who's ever done that. I imagine it would need to be someone who grew up on a remote Pacific island or something and had no knowledge of Western Christian-influenced civilisation.

If so-called miracles are "not compatible with current methods of scientific enquiry", then other methods can and will be tried. Until then, it is safe to assume that they will be explained one day. Assigning a supernatural explanation to them seems, well, random. It's like my peppermint/paracetamol analogy - something's there that caused it, but until we know what, it's daft to say it was the magic peppermint. It's just something perfectly natural which hasn't yet been detected or analysed. Possibly because of lack of data, or incomplete data.

What ruty is asking me to do, "consider that you don't know if there is" a god, seems to be asking me to move from atheism to agnosticism. Atheist and agnostics, it seems to me, have the same evidence before them, but while agnostics choose not to take a decision on that evidence (or argue that it is impossible to do so), atheists are prepared to take an "informed bet", if you like, backed up by the weight of evidence.

Let's take a parallel and look at something not totally ridiculous but still pretty unlikely. Say, Sweden winning the next World Cup. Now I'm not a gambling man, but if I were, I'd not put my house on Sweden winning the World Cup. A fiver, maybe. Depending what the odds were.

Even if God were at that level of likelihood, I'd not put my house on it. I always find it ironic that Christians, who are mostly non-gamblers (for moral reasons which I can respect) are prepared to take such a big gamble as to believe in this thing for which there is just no evidence. It's not the equivalent of putting your house on Sweden - it's like putting your house on the Faroe Islands to win by beating Brazil 10-0 in the final. Nobody would ever dare say such a thing was "impossible", because it's not. But in practical terms, it might as well be.

I don't think Jesus was just basically saying 'be nice to each other'.
We are lulled into a false sense of who he was by all those paintings of gentle eyed, soft featured Jesus
But he was a rebel not a softy and when his words are studied in context they have a less fluffy slant I think.

Also think that everyone experiences god differently or not and that if god exists, he/she/it doesn't need us to know what he/she/it is.

If someone is very ill and decide that they want to be healed and will do whatever it takes to get better I think the power of positive thinking can do alot for some people. And I see that kind of dramatic change as a bit of a miracle. Something inspirational.

ie iirc 'turn the other cheek' doesn't mean 'let people hit you as much as they like'
It meant turn the other cheek so that the person can not slap you degradingly with the back of their hand, make then hit you with the front of their hand as an equal.

It was a subversive gesture.

also don't think I have a house or anything to lose by believing there is a god, maybe there isn't one, perhaps I'm deluded but maybe it doesn't matter if we believe in god or not.
But if there isn't I'm pretty sure there is a collective unconscious and maybe that will become easier for us to prove in time.

UQD I disagree with the distinction which you make between atheists and agnostics. It is not a difference in willingness to "make a bet", but in what you understand "God" to be.

As you have made clear, the "God" that you don't believe in is a culturally specific incarnation that comes from a fairly literal reading of the bible, which makes your unwillingness to distinguish the concept from other highly specific and local beliefs like fairies or the Loch Ness Monster seem completely reasonable. I as an agnostic understand "God" as the object which all sacred texts aspire to describe in an attempt to understand our origins and purpose. Given the near universality of this aspiration throughout cultures and throughout history, it would be insanely arrogant of me to dismiss it in the way that you do.

SuperSillyus, I'm not sure where you got that from, but it's not what it says in Matthew.

Mat 5:44 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Mat 5:40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
Mat 5:41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain>>

He also says "Blessed are the meek"

Now if only all christians obeyed those

Anyone here got a nice winter coat I can have?

I dont think the universal nature of humanity's need to belive in something says anything at all about the 'something', but rather quite alot about humanity and the nature of the being we are. So I dont feel it is arrogant to dismiss the something Iorek, possibly arrogant to dismiss the need.

Incidently, just read New scientist article on the placebo effect and how hugely powerful it is - to the point they were finding a placebo effect even in subjects told they were getting a placebo. I imagine this would explain a large number of miraculous cures of true believers, which of course may make a sensible case for believing as a survival strategy, but again doesnt make it true.

ideas on turning the other cheek

Isnt that a problem of too broad a label in the term religious jahc? When you say you are religious do you mean you believe in some sort of godlike entity which had some hand in the universe, or do you mean you believe in the story of the bible, whole or in part and in the story of your particular church? It is an important distinction when it comes to objections to the inclusion of religion and the religious in the workings of a state.

If you have nebulous feelings about a higher being which does not translate into day to day behaviour you are unlikely to do anyone else any harm. It probably doesnt matter to Dawkins what you believe if it doesnt translate into a formal structure in everyday life, it does not concern him because it doesnt effect anyone else.