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Jack comments on But Somebody Would Have Noticed - Less Wrong
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If someone says "The sky has been purple for the past three years" the right response is "I think someone would have noticed". There are however reasonable responses to this. For example, "No one noticed because we're all brains in vats! And I have proof! Look here."
Similarly, I think Wednesday is right to say "Someone would have noticed that God didn't exist." it's just that in this case Aunt Alicorn has a really good response: "Lots of very smart people have noticed, you just haven't met any since you've spent your whole life around people who chose to believe in God or never knew any other option. We've tried to tell your people this but you all get pretty upset when we try. Here is our evidence, x, y, z."
Obviously if you keep repeating "Someone would have noticed." after the dissenter has shown that indeed, people have noticed and that there is good reason for why more people haven't noticed then you're doing it wrong.
If someone says "The sky has been purple for the past three years", my response would be "I think I would have noticed."
Oddly, the sky actually is purple in a certain sense. All of the physics that explains how the blue wavelengths of sunlight are scattered more strongly than colors at the red end of the visible spectrum (resulting in a blue sky) goes even more for violet wavelengths. It's just that our eyes are more sensitive to blue wavelengths than to violet ones.
That's not what the English word purple means. *rolls eyes*
Are you speaking from experience? I wouldn't have expected that tack to work most of the time.
Well of course it doesn't work. People are irrational. :-)
I mistook your comment as advice for how to avoid being ignored, then.
I just meant that there are sound, rational reasons for the initial reply to an extravagant claim being "someone would have noticed".
When it comes to trying to deconvert someone my experience is that the chance of an on the spot concession is 0. If your arguments are good they'll sink in later and leave a small crack in the wall.
I've never intentionally converted anyone to being an atheist but I did unintentionally help convert the woman who later became my wife. We never talked much about it and I never said anything that really hit home with her all of a sudden. It was more the fact that she spent enough time with me to realize someone could be an atheist and be completely "ok" - I don't know if that possibility had even occurred to her before. Once it had, some nascent doubts sprang back up and she had no compelling reason to bat them down.
I wish I could be more specific but I really didn't pay attention to it. I care about people's (even my family's) religious beliefs or lack thereof about as much as I care about which sports franchises they are fans of - that is not at all.