The following question arises from my perusal of Antony Flew's new book "There is a God".
A recurring proposition on this forum has been the equating of belief in God with belief in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or Zeus (oh, and of course the Flying Spaghetti Monster). More specifically, the usual assertion declares that just as (childish) belief in the Fictional Four is eroded by a lack of empirical confirmation, so
should be the fate of Deism (belief in a deity).
The question I want to pose is this: Why (how?), if belief in God is categorically equivalent to belief in the Fictional Four, does a rational, intelligent human being like Antony Flew recover (or discover for the first time) belief in the existence of a deity?
The sequence of events regarding belief in a deity is incongruous to that involving the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Zeus, or the Flying Spaghettis Monster. In each of the latter cases, initial belief is supplanted by rational skepticism...The End. In the former case, there either initial belief or unbelief, followed by "rational" skepticism, followed by either the assumption or the resumption of belief.
In other words, must not there be a fundamental difference between belief in a deity, and belief in the Fictional Four that allows for the assumption or resumption of belief in the one case, and not in all the rest?
™ Version 4.2