Reading an earnest and thought provoking editorial1 from one James Wood, reviewing 'Letter To a Christian Nation' by Sam Harris. Though atheist himself, he admits a flagging patience with certain attitudes of atheists. I can concede that an atheist's superior and glib demeanor may be due to frustration and no small amount of pessimistic inference about the human condition, though I had to comment about a rebuttal he gives regarding Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot2.
He claims that God, so much grander and more complex than a teapot, cannot be banished with such a simplistic comparison, when I would insist that God is actually much less believable than the teapot for that exact reason. I think Russell's teapot is due for an update which is more approachable and grounded. Here goes:
I claim that there is a discarded Coke can somewhere in the vastness of the Sahara, but I will brook absolutely no discussion about doubting my claim or investigating it for veracity. "Okay," you think, "I suppose I can assume that much to be true. Whatever this man's sources, the odds of a Coke can being somewhere in the desert must be considerable." But I then elaborate with claims that it's actually many, many cans, folded into glorious and artistically pleasing forms, and my obdurate refusal to discuss how it can be proved continues. At this point even the most generous theists would likely start getting annoyed with my odd behavior, yet at the very least what I'm asking you to believe isn't outside the realm of possibility. For all you know (though I refuse to allow you to check) there could be a folk art bazaar currently set up in the Sahara, so really it costs you very little to entertain my view.
And then I say that the cans have taken on beautiful, shimmering consciousness and are forming a society which hides from humanity, burying their chrome castles beneath the sand and moving their aluminum cities whenever we get too close to discovering them. "But..." you try to cut in. Before you can even begin to tell me what you find odd about my fantasy, I'm on the next detail. I claim that all of our major technological achievements of the last several hundred years are all thanks to the secret influence of the Shiny Can People.
Now you have countless legitimate doubts, but every time you try to tell me that, for starters, soda didn't even come in aluminum cans several hundred years ago, I insist that you weren't there so you can't be sure, and how could a mere burden of proof destroy the mighty empire of the Shiny Cans?
I like the utility of the can people because it doesn't start with an outlandish proposition, but if you stick around it gets absolutely ridiculous. Not only does that remind me more of how religion is actually sold, but it also serves to strengthen the original analogy of the teapot by reminding the curious mind that Russell's teapot is infinitely smaller and less complex than God, making it much less embarrassing to genuinely believe in since it would have so much more room to hide.
Odinn Celusta
Consider whether your belief is making things clearer for you, or if you're stuck on point Z in an "A->B" discussion. Start by asking yourself, since God in your proposed philosophy is nonphysical, comprised of no readable patterns or energies and exerts no predictable, tangible effect on reality; What is the ontological difference between a universe WITH this strictly conceptual god and a universe with no god at all. Think about it for at least a minute... Okay, you're back? Now, if your answer is anything like "Well, there wouldn't be any difference we could see" then you might have to wonder who you're really arguing against, why you're arguing it and whether you're willing to give your perspective a real new start. Eliezer Yudkowsky's resources cover all of that much more eloquently, including an editorial that essentially gets across that sometimes agreeing to disagree is just a way to avoid having to reexamine one's beliefs, so just a pat reminder to review the sequences if needs be. I'll do my part by entertaining the idea of a non-physical form for a god: We should still be able to observe some kind of pattern that could indicate an outside influence, like binary flashes from the stars that contain all of god's blueberry tart recipes, or predictable and repeatable inspirations in at least one person claiming to be a prophet, or some statistically or psychologically significant distinction between the health, sanity or safety of practitioners of different faiths and similar living conditions. Lacking this, I can still see how my aluminum can people are argumentum ad absurdium, but that was sort of the whole original point of the thought experiment by my interpretation.
In traditional Judeo-Christian-Muslim theology God is nonphysical but can take physical forms at will, and while He is not predictable (generally speaking, there are nuances there), He certainly can exert tangible effects on reality.
Not necessarily. Imagine that God lives in high-dimensional space and His blueberry tart recipes happen to be stored in the fifth and sixth dimensions...