Quote:
Originally Posted by kirant
I guess in short, what I'm trying to get at is that there are too many assumptions that we know what a supreme being is and that we can test it with such a simple set up. Biblical definition of a God? Sure, if we assume the Bible is accurate. Any form of supreme being? Harder to test.
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This is why the first reply to someone who asks "do you believe in God" should be "which God?"
Even Dawkins (whom many would put as one of the most strident atheists) talks about this in that his confidence on a scale (from 1 to 7) changes depending on what kind of god one is talking about. If one sticks to a Biblical definition of God one can be more confident since the Bible makes specific claims that can be tested (so absence of evidence does become evidence of absence), but if one gives a vague hand waving definition like a deist type god that maybe set the universe in motion but that's it, it's harder to be as confident about a conclusion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirant
I do see that the video discusses "God" as oppose to "supreme being", meaning they likely talk about the traditional Biblical definition of a supreme being. My main concern is how they convert that from "Biblical religions" to all theism though, as theism refers to any number of supreme beings and not elusively to a single holy text's definition.
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That kind of goalpost moving is easy to do and happens a lot from either side of the fence, it's hard to stay focused on a specific definition of god in those kind of discussions. Theists will use arguments for deist type gods and mistakenly apply them to their specific god, and atheists will use the argument against a specific definition of god and generalize it to all god concepts.