Standard smoke and mirrors

This dead horse has been thoroughly dead for nigh on to a hundred years among the broad scope of common intelligent men, and much longer than that among the intellectual leadership of our mainstream culture. But you good and smart men here, those still left here clinging to very little at Agnostic.com, continue to kick it..... backwards, forwards, sideways, from above, from below, "every which way but loose", ad nauseum.

... But talk one word about slavery's role in the devolution of black culture, slavery's role in the disastrous current white patronizing of the modern black mind, and the thousands of issues that grow from that into the Orwellian firestorm that so enrages the Trumpean incoherent ignoramuses, while our global warming doomsday and the finale of the 6th mass extinction rage on ..... .............. THAT you don't touch with a 10 ft pole.

I usually try to circumvent this by challenging them to bring all religious people into one church worshiping one god. If their evidence is that compelling they should at least be able to get all the people who ardently want to believe to believe the same thing.

It works pretty well. The challenge hasn't been answered yet.

In my view the best evidence against a God's existence is that BILLIONS of worshipers have tried for THOUSANDS of years to come up with solid evidence their god exists. The fact they've come up with nothing remotely convincing is the best evidence I can think of that there is no such god at all.

H.P. Lovecraft said it very well:

"We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction." -- H P Lovecraft

The old bait and switch is just one of many sales tactics that religious salesmen use to peddle their wares, basically something for nothing. Low overhead, tax exempt profits with land grants in the past and exemption from legal prosecution have made this a very popular dodge down through the centuries.

Good point. I think some people are caught in the middle between belief and non-belief, so in the process of trying to make sense of it all, they do consider God to be a metaphor for the creative source, prime cause, or the whole of nature, etc.

That's all well and good, and sometimes can be a stepping stone for agnostics and atheists in transition. I remember doing that myself to appease religious friends and relatives, while trying to create some common ground. For me it was also a way to justify (to myself) my compliance in having to recite the word God in a pledge, a legal oath or in a song, but that still doesn't explain anything.

So now when I'm forced to recite or sing something about God, if I can't get out of it, or when I'm being asked for advice from my atheist friends wanting to know what they can use as their "higher power" for their alcoholics anonymous meetings, etc., I simply say "Why not consider God to be a catch-all word for that which we do not know?"

I agree that wasting so much talk about God being a metaphor doesn't make the theist religions any more appealing or any more easy to glean ethics and morals with so many outdated concepts, contradictory statements and wrapping it all up in a "God works in mysterious ways" comment.

Something that needs to be explained so abstractly is confusing.

So, I would ask that if God is so mysterious, why not just call God "that which can't be known" in other words nothing... Then, if God is nothing, then yes, the same logic works for theists as well as atheists, since the theists often say atheists believe in nothing. Hmm....

Except for the odd Jehovah's Witness who knocks on my door or sends me a handwritten letter, almost no one ever tries to engage me in a theological discussion. It just doesn't seem to come up. I guess my non-attendance at church is working for me.

It must be difficult for those who grew up and accepted that their religion was a truth and then have that challenged. Who wants to feel like a fool, that they were stupid and/or lied to? Is it unreasonable that some may try to justify their continued belief by expanding it as a "prime cause"? Whether that cause is the universe, nature, or something else. In the end is it not just a defense of their ego?

With easy and instant access to information that did not exist for the majority fifty/sixty years ago, I find it easy to understand why so many of my generation have difficulty letting go of what they have been taught and lived.

I think for some of us it is easier to let go and some have made concessions but there are still many that are die hards and won't concede an inch. It will be interesting to see what the next few decades have to offer.

"What sort of an ideology, and moral system, requires to be supported by cheap trickery, and shabby attempts to fool the innocent with fake logic?"

Those that rely upon supernatural beings?

The quick answer is: if you mean a (hypothetical) 'first cause' or 'whole of nature' or some other idea, then why not call it that, instead of confusing the issue by calling it 'God', by which a lot of people mean something completely different? Let's stick to the original names if you want to discuss any of those things.

Cut off that route before they go down it.

Was talking with a young universe creationist idiot that believed everything is roughly 6K years old.
Pointed out the galaxy of Andromeda.
That is 2.5 million light years away. How are you seeing it?
He claimed the speed of light was not proven and that the galaxy was probably closer than that.
There is no hope at all for some people.