corruptmemory
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For fun here's my personal contribution to "yet another proof of the non-existence of God (of the Bible)", not that really any such "proof" ought to be necessary.
The Bible (and other Arahamic texts) is quite clear that God is both omniscient and omnipotent. But at the same time endowed man with free will (Genesis 2:7-17 - Adam had CHOICE). The problem is that these are irreconcilably contradictory.
Omniscience implies the complete LACK of free will because God already knows everything that will ever happen. In fact, from God's point of view everything that ever could happen has already happened.
Omnipotence implies that even if God lacked omniscience, somehow intrinsically, he could... (read more)
Although I understand and appreciate your approach the particular examples do not represent particularly good ones:
1: Pascal's Wager:
For an atheist the least convenient possible world is one where testable, reproducible scientific evidence strongly suggests the existence of some "super-natural" (clearly no-longer super-natural) being that we might ascribe the moniker of God to. In such a world any "principled atheist" would believe what the verifiable scientific evidence support as probably true. "Atheists" who did not do that would be engaging in the exact same delusional thinking modern-day theists engage in: belief in "beings" despite the utter lack of evidence supporting the existence of such "beings" only in reverse, like flat-earthers.
2: The... (read 437 more words →)
Formalize this a bit:
"I believe that X’s existence or non-existence can not be rigorously proven."
Where X is of the set of beings imagined by or could be imagined by humans, e.g.: God, Gnomes, Zeus, Wotan, Vishnu, unicorns, leprechauns, Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. Why is any one of the statements that result from such substitutions more meaningful than any other?
I don't have time to construct a full response, but I would like to hit a couple of points.
Catholics vs. rationalists: An analog seems to be large institutional investors (market makers) vs. small or independent investors. Clearly both kinds of market players (the very big vs. the small) play important roles, but the market makers, well, they have the ability to move the market in different directions because of the strength of their market position. "Following" the market makers is often viewed as a safe bet (i.e. a cheap risk computation) for a good return, but not always. Small investors seek out opportunities either missed by big investors, or misjudged... (read 392 more words →)