Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
@Nocturnus
See, that's the thing, and why I don't bother with these arguments. Good arguing 101 isn't "prove x doesn't exist", it's "prove x does". For example, to borrow a thing from Feynman, prove that there's not a dragon in the room with you. "but I can't see it", well, it's made of gas and is entirely transparent. "But I can't feel it either" well, it's not moving right now, and is just sitting in the corner, of course you don't feel it.
You can take refuge behind the "atheists have to prove god doesn't exist" argument forever, which is why most of us just avoid religious people and don't bother. We can't do it. We also can't prove that gay rainbow unicorns don't exist, either. It's an impossible demand. As I said, I gave up really bothering a long time ago. in any other domain, you probably wouldn't put the demand on the other side to prove the absence of something but, as with every other religious person I've interacted with, you're fine doing it to defend your position on religion.
Either you have to say that gay rainbow unicorns exist because no one can prove that they can't, or you have to universally apply the standard that you apply to non-religious things everywhere. Anything else is inconsistent. I am not being sarcastic. I mean this seriously. If atheists have to prove god doesn't exist, then by that standard gay rainbow unicorns must exist too. Ever seen a not-gay-rainbow-unicorn? No? Thought not.
But here's why i say that you're probably born an atheist, and don't come to it later. I worked this out literally when I was like 6, the day I realized Santa wasn't real. How that conversation went was that we got into something about how monsters under the bed weren't real, then I asked if Santa was real, then shortly after that I realized that god can't be real either, because if god were real then we couldn't also say that magic and other supernatural stuff doesn't exist. Obviously at that age the argument wasn't fully formed, but that's when I realized the arguments were flawed, that everyone around me would say "god exists and is real and you have to have faith" while in the same breath saying that other things like it weren't real that were equally plausible like faeries (I don't mean cartoon ones, I mean the old scary ones from the 1800s and earlier). Discovering I was an atheist wasn't a process of being converted or anything like that, it was a process of discovering that the reason I always felt uncomfortable and bored at church had a name, while going along with it because I had Christian parents.
I don't have good religious friends, and doubt I ever will. Religious people can be kind, smart, all that. Not disputing that. But no one religious can get past a certain point, because atheism isn't a religion, it's the absence of one, and understanding how that's even possible in the first place seems to just sort of break 95% of humanity. You and most of the rest of humanity are mildly insane by my standards. That's fine. I even understand why. But it's creepy to watch you and everyone else who are otherwise smart, consistent, and able to make good arguments, all these people who are willing to say "there is an objective truth and that's valuable", just...have this giant hole where all of that goes out the window, and not only does it go out the window, it goes so much out the window that you start demanding something that you know to be impossible from atheists rather than saying "huh, this is odd, maybe we should work out what's actually going on here, because only one religion and/or the atheists can be right". And no matter what I say you'll never really see it either. Maybe you personally will surprise me, but I've had this conversation enough and watched this conversation enough that I doubt it.
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