Schell

Aren't you quite the special one? This reminds me of the kind of mindless, meaningless drivel, scripted for perfume adverts.

I can't imagine how it could be. But I'm almost sure that however you imagine it to be, it's probably some other way.

This is the same type of "convorstion" that creationists have all the time. Isn't it interesting that only creationists have these "convorsations"? You'd have thought that there'd be at minimum, one non-creationist who could confirm he was party to the discussion. I knew it was BS as soon as I started reading. Why do creationists all eventually resort to lying?

I just got a message from the god. She's well and truly fed up with the name 'God', which according to her, isn't even a name. She wants you to refer to her as Bernice from now on.

Yes. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and life has been around for a good portion of that. Human life has been around for between 100,000 and 200,000 years (depending on how you define Human). There are substantial numbers of fossils which indicate that Homo Sapiens evolved from a series of parent species. There is absolutely no reasonable explanation which would allow for the creation of a human prior to the commonly accepted time frame, which would be necessary for the Bible story to be possible.

I'm asking you what is the reason it (belief) is not the default? Because reasonable people need reasons to accept claims, especially if these claims are outlandish? Why is that difficult to get your noodle round? Some people did not believe because they did not see. Are their really sure what they can't see really don't exist? We don't have to be sure, this is not a question of knowledge but of belief. Consider for example radio waves. You can't see but you know it exist. We don't have to see something to know that it's real. We have sufficient evidence of radio waves such that it's perfectly reasonable to accept that they exist. Do you have anything remotely comparative to that evidence which might support your claims about the god? Of course it is. You have a proposition which you wish to weigh up. On one side you put all the evidence in favour, after which on the other side you put all the evidence against. The scales are balanced before we begin and we have yet to see anything put on the side in support of the proposition. There is nothing on the other side because as yet there is nothing substantive to negate. So we have a status quo - balance.

I find it hard to believe that people still ask this question. Without wishing to be disparaging, it's a stupid question. It would be very stupid of me to ask you what pushes you to not believe in Odin or Atet. In truth, there are no reasons I can think of why you should believe in either of these gods, anymore than there are for atheists to believe that yours exists. The exact reason they don't believe is the same one you have for not believing in all the other gods. That is not only enough reason to hold the position, it is more than enough, as you well know since you're in the same position. Belief in gods are taught to us from an early age and they are re-enforced by society as a whole on a daily basis. Anyone who doesn't reflect on the issue will more than likely continue to believe it, at least passively. Only those who "think about it" can possibly come to the conclusion that it's not true. So yes, we have thought about it, a great deal and comprehensively, and that's why we don't believe it. I have no idea what you mean by "did they balance things first"?. The question is perfectly balanced because there's a dearth of evidence in support of the claim. We should only believe it if there's a positive bias, tipping the scales in favour of the claim.

I think your reasoning is faulty, Hypercube. Assigning an emotional value to the labels we use for emotions, doesn't make the question easier for you to answer. It actually confuses the issue. A label is simply a label, neither positive or negative. What you are describing is the physiological response you feel when you love or hate, and you're doing it in keeping with the conventional view that hate is a negative response. From that point you have assigned it a mathematical value by assuming that "more than" and "less than" are opposites (which of course they are in mathematics). What you are ignoring is that emotions are not quantifiable using mathematics. So more than '0' is a positive whether we are talking about love or hate, whereas '-1' is an impossibility with respect to emotion, you either have some or not. You cannot have less than no emotion, so the opposite of both positive emotional responses, love and hate - is indifference.

I think that neither wonder nor empathy could be judged as the most important on the basis that their are animals which don't feel empathy and seem to survive regardless. There are even people who don't feel empathy, and they do quite well as a result. By 'wonder', I assume you mean amazement or fascination. Again this is an emotion which it seems very few species enjoy. I think fear is one of the most important emotions. Without fear, a species would die out almost immediately. Selfishness is another which is very important if your aim is to survive for any length of time.