If it can be, how can the "Absence of Evidence" be "Evidence of Absence?".

Hi Domino and welcome to EvC. I'm sure you're going to find this place to your liking. But Zeus isn't the only deity who has been said to control lightning;

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Job 37:10-15
By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast. He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning. They turn around and around by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen. Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God. Do you know how God lays his command upon them and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine?

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The Bible is rich with claims that God controls or commands any number of meteorological phenomena. If the presence of natural explanations for his sphere of influence is sufficient to prevent us from believing in Zeus, why should the same not be true for Yahweh?It seems to me that the only thing that would distinguish between Christianity and Zeus worship in such circumstances, would be special pleading. This would leave the Christian with a faith founded upon logical fallacy.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

Hi Domino, Of course, if God were to appear over Times Square and work a few miracles, it would go some way towards proving he existed. Of course, one could argue that it was not God and actually Satan in disguise, which just underlines the innate foolishness of believing in supernatural entities in the first place. They can never be confirmed or denied, no matter how great the evidence. *Ahem* "By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast.". That is as far removed from the natural explanation for ice as Zeus' thunderbolts are from the natural explanation for lightning. There is no ambiguity here. God makes ice with his breath. That is what the text says. It is making just as absurd a claim as Zeus and his thunderbolts. The only difference is that you have chosen to ignore the absurdity when it's in connection to Yahweh. It's classic special pleading. Yes, very accurate. Just this morning, I saw God out there breathing on a frozen lake...Your claim is false. The Bible contains no accurate meteorology. It is mostly vague about what causes weather, other than to say that God commands it. There is no actual claim to be accurate about in such cases. Where the text does get specific, it is ludicrously, laughably wrong, as in the breath example above or its claims that the winds reside in storehouses. The only difference between this and Zeus worship is that you are wiling to turn a blind eye to Yahweh's absurdities and yet you are not willing to do so for Zeus. As I say, special pleading. No. It would achieve nothing. Inserting God into any gap in our knowledge tells us nothing, increases our understanding by zero and drop-kicks the principle of parsimony out of the window. We have, to echo Laplace's memorable phrase, no need of that hypothesis. It also can't be applied to the ice example. There is nothing you can do to rescue that particular bit of nonsense. That example is highly specific and utterly absurd, exactly the same grounds upon which you so casually dismiss Zeus. Then why not drop the act and state what you do believe?Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

Hi Domino, Oh. *yawn*Sorry, but I don't find such deities very interesting. They are not really worth arguing against, mostly since they are impossible to argue for in any concrete and meaningful way. They are at best an irrelevance, at worst a distraction. Have you read the Old Testament lately? It describes a God who almost as far removed from your deist god as Zeus is. In my opinion, trying to put such an identity onto the Christian god requires that one ignore what the Bible actually says. The Bible does not depict a deist god.Also, it seems almost as though you are more willing to believe in a divine entity when you know less about them. That does not seem to be a good way of approaching belief. No, but once you have eliminated the deities who do conflict with the natural world, one is left with a god whose existence or non-existence is irrelevant. I have no interest in whether such a god exists or not; it makes no difference.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod