First of all thanks to Phil for helping Phoenix understand my previous post and explaining it in perfect detail.
If you agree with what Phil said, then your own post was incompetent.
You were only saying that the fact that there have been many conceptions of god in history means that "they are all real or all made up." This is a joke of an argument, completely devoid of logic.
Now, Phil gussies things up quite a bit and delivers something that has a bit of meat on the bones. But no one would ever guess that as an extension of your unexpressed views.
I doubt that Phil would ever agree with you in saying that "If there were only one God that had been written about or worshipped throughout history then I would believe in it too." His objections to conceptions of god have only a little to do with their high number and far more to do with their inability to compete with explanations provided by science and the vastly more evolved human intellect that has evolved over the long arc of history.
Sorry... but the conclusion is entirely supported by the evidence.
Lots of different, mutually incompatible "beliefs" about Gods... not one of which has even a shred of actual evidence in support.
Each one claiming that it is the "real" truth about the "real" god or gods.
They can not possibly ALL be correct, since each claims exclusivity of truth.
Not even any TWO of them can be correct, again because of their own claims of exclusivity.
Ergo, Occam's razor suggests that, since ALL of them CAN easily be EQUALLY wrong... that is the most likely explanation... That each culture invents its own fantasy narrative to explain things that were, at their origin, unexplainable.
Phil, I agree with you one level. I think you have given a good argument for being highly doubtful about all the claims of the religious.
However, I can't move beyond all doubt on this point.
You may not understand this, since to my knowledge, your mind has never been violated by a doubt of any kind.
We don't have the full catalogue of all the conceptions of the supernatural that mankind has ever come up with. We can't say that they have all been tested. We can't know that those that have been tested were tested competently.
Occam's razor helps us to a reasonable conclusion ... but not a certain one.
This is where I think an agnostic view can come in. (More on this later.)
Since all human cultures have creation myths... as a consequence of wanting to understand and control the world around them and salve their fears of death, and we Can know that Not All of them Can possible be the one true story... the likelihood that any One of them could be the One True Story is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from not possible.
I find the gap between this narrow likelihood and actual zero likelihood more significant than you do. We will have to disagree.
If you are claiming
psychological certainty, then we are on roughly the same page.
But
actual certainty? No, I don't go that far.
They have all been proven entirely and utterly wrong on Every single aspect of their narrative that science has become able to test.
Has science tested them all? And have ALL aspects of their narrative been proven wrong? You may snort here, Phil ... but I wonder if you can bring evidence forward.
Ergo, given their rate of error ( 100% of all testable assertions proven false) and given the state of human knowledge at the time these stories were first codified, the only rational conclusion is that they are ALL 100% wrong.
I would say it is far more rational to say we have no good reason to suppose that there is much right about them. That we shouldn't turn to them for truth. But you go far beyond that to a point where I can't follow.
This by no means proves that there is NO GOD.
But it does prove that ALL human conceptions of any potential God are false.
Doesn't prove this at all. This can't be determined empirically. We may arrive at a position close to certainty, but not at certainty itself.
therefore, a true agnostic not only claims no faith in God... but acknowledges that all existing faiths are defacto false. They make claims they can not possibly know.
The term agnostic doesn't mean " i don't know if there's a god."
It means that any possible God can not even be known.
True Agnostics are not suspending judgement on faith. They absolutely Know that ALL faiths are equally full of shit.
The terms 'agnostic' and 'agnosticism' both have a far greater range of meanings than you seem to allow.
Even in the technical and philosophical senses, there is 'hard' and 'soft,' 'closed' and 'open,' 'strict' and 'empirical' agnosticism.
Popular definitions, which are equally valid, have more range yet.
Proponents of what's called 'weak' agnosticism suspend judgment while waiting for real evidence on issues of the supernatural and so forth. They claim that they do not themselves see any evidence that would lead to belief in god, or the supernatural, or whatever. They do not claim that there can never
be any evidence.
Proponents of 'strong' agnosticism claim that no such evidence is conceivable ... which means that 'spiritual' beliefs can only be held arbitrarily, but stops short of saying they are false.
That is by far the most asinine statement I've ever heard. Example...
