I Know That God Does Not Exist

People claim to have real experiences with extra-terrestrial visitors. Do you think those experiences are real?Bear in mind that the concept of extra-terrestrial life itself isn't irrational: there's no reason to believe life won't be found some day in another solar system. But their perceptions of those experiences are false.

You say it's unfair to tell people their experiences of gods or space invaders are not reality-based. But aren't you being just as unfair by denying that their gods (or extra-terrestrial visitations) are what they claim them to be but instead are some sort of demon from your personal mythology?As for the existence of real extra-terrestrial life, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect there might be some, considering the myriad star systems and planets out there. Our solar system doesn't seem that unusual, so why should it have life while no others would?

Some things might appear at first glance to be illogical. For example, suppose it's the year 1880, summer, out on a long, hot, flat stretch of West Texas. Someone takes a long walk out of camp to the nearest stream to get water. They come back with an outlandish story about the water being so cold it numbs the hands, with fish stunned and unmoving, floating in the freezing current.Illogical? Everyone back at camp says so.Is there a logical, rational basis for it, or is our pioneer a victim of heat stroke hallucinations?It turns out the stream of icewater is, in fact, rational. But deities? No, whether Poseidon or Vishnu, Anansi or Yahweh, whatever. And unlike the stream of icewater, you can't do a search of the web and find anything to make the concept of gods rational.

On the other hand, the idea of a deity hasn't even got a veneer of logic. Even the ancients, who used the analogy of a blacksmith at a forge to imagine a supernatural entity whose hammer raised sparks that made the heat and light of a volcano must have known that the connection was more literary than literal when they invented Hephaestus. The "modern" concept of a creator deity who wasn't himself created, who somehow knows and commands everything but also allows free will, who punishes evil and rewards good, except everywhere we might be actually able to look for those rewards and punishments, who is praised for enabling the winning touchdown but not blamed for the blocked, losing field goal attempt, that idea doesn't even have a fig-leaf of rationality!

On the contrary, it's only after the West watered down the fierce religious madness that gave us everything from the 30 Years War to brutal attacks on gays (How much would Alan Turing have accomplished if the morality police hadn't hounded him!) that the West made progress. Look elsewhere at the places in thrall to nutbucket ideologies from Mohammed to Marx to see what the West would be if Christianity weren't a (somewhat) tamed religion.

Possibly, but "human" terms of rationality are all we have to work with at the present.

Compare the parts of the world where religion is zealous, such as Afghanistan or Syria or Northern Ireland to places like the United States or Japan or France (or indeed, almost all of the civilized "West"!). See the difference?

See message 2420.

Guess that's why you're a bit evasive on this logic/deity topic?

Anybody who reads the thread can see that that isn't true. You're the one who refuses to answer questions.

You're not seriously claiming that the idea that two people born in the same location, at the same time, have the same life predicted for them by star charts is a rational idea?

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Horoscopes are certainly wrong - i.e. not based on reality. But that does not make the idea irrational. That's a separate issue.

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I think we've got to the gist of the problem here! Is it that you're claiming the idea of deity (or horoscopes) is "wrong" but somehow not "irrational"? Forgive me for asking this question, but you seem to be unwilling to give a clear answer.

I give you an answer and you ignore it, pretending that I haven't posted an answer. That's the mark of a troll, I'm afraid.I'll give you another chance though, a simple yes or no question: Is the concept of a deity a rational thing? You don't even have to explain why you think as you do.(By the way, no fair wiggling out by saying your deity is a girl named Sophie who spins and weaves wool into wonderful tapestries but has no supernatural powers or some other similar dodges.)

One thing I mentioned was the personification of natural forces. Even the ancients who used the analogy of a blacksmith at a forge to imagine a supernatural entity whose hammer raised sparks that made the heat and light of a volcano must have known that the connection was more literary than literal, not a rational thing but rather a poetic thing.

Another thing I mentioned was the "modern" concept of a creator deity who wasn't himself created, who somehow knows and commands everything but also allows free will. There's enough logical lacunae there to fill (or empty?) the Olduvai Gorge.