Some guy,

I agree with your first point but on your second point you’ve excluded a very important word from your equation.  It should indclude the word “potentially” this changes things significantly.

bowdwn5 said: “Sure, probability can lead someone to make an informed guess.  But because this point has already been made, I have to wonder if you know why probability is what matters?

Oh for crying out loud, Bowdn5, you’re stuck in freshman philosophy class; call for a tow truck.  Probability matters because time and resources are limited.  We do not have the time or resources to explore all possibilities, so the ones supported by self-correcting explanatory models are a better bet.

Look bowdwn5, if some little kid came to you and told you there were elves living under your house would you seriously consider it as a possibility? Especially lets say you did and you went looking for them but every time you look in different spots under your house and find no elves at all, or maybe rats or other creatures that might account for solid evidence of what is really down there, every time the kid moves the goalpost claiming a different “unexplored” region under the house for the elves to live.

Wouldn’t it be logical at that point (or rather earlier) to just assume the probability of elves under the house being infinitely lower than the probability that this kid is imagining the elves?

It’s like that with God. The places religion has asserted the hand or presence of “God” have been slowly but surely explored and accounted for by other more solid scientific explanations. At this point the probability of “God” actually existing seems lower than ever and the probability of him being a creation of men and their hopeful minds is much higher!

Sure… we can’t disprove God’s existence to a tee, and that leaves a somewhat slim “possibility” for God, I suppose… but until real solid irrefutable evidence of God is found, it’s an immensely more sure bet to put down on the “God is all in people’s heads” side!

Perhaps more clear terminology would be appropos. That Jesus, or Yeshua, or Jehova, or whatever name given to a certain itinerant preacher may have existed about 2000 years ago is a possibility. That the Christ of myth existed, or is now alive, is totally a fabrication of men. “The congregation of the Christ, documented most clearly in the letters of Paul from the 50s, experienced a striking shift in orientation, away from the teachings of Jesus and toward the spirit of the Christ who died and was raised from the dead. It was this myth that eventually made the narrative gospels possible,” The Lost Gospel The Book of Q & Christian Origins, by Burton L. Mack, Professor of New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont. So, Les was absolutely correct.