Let me correct a few misconceptions you seem to have about me.

1) I'm not against religion per se. I am against certain religious practices that lead to intolerance or bad thinking habits, but I'm against such things when they're not related to religion, too.

2) I don't glorify science. Science can make mistakes. It's just the best means we have of discovering (or getting close to) truth.

3) I agree that we don't know everything.

4) I don't say that god doesn't exist. I say that I see no compelling reason to believe that god exists. If significant evidence appears that there is a god, I'll change my mind.

5) I agree that people must have a certain amount of faith. I just try and have as little of it as possible.

6) I don't consider myself to be cynical at all.

You're right that much of religion probably arose out of a quest for knowledge. The problem is that the quest for knowledge kept going while religion, by and large, got wrapped up with other issues. That astrology came from astronomy doesn't mean that we should necessarily respect astrology.

If you find belief in god comforting, then I have nothing against your belief. Enjoy your life. But next time you want to have a discussion about atheism, leave a real, working e-mail address, okay?

Unfortunately, every single one of the arguments against atheism I list (and poke fun at) are ones that I've encountered multiple times over the years from a wide variety of people. I've heard them in personal conversations, read them on Internet discussion boards and Usenet, heard them spoken from pulpits, and found them in books about religious philosophy. In fact, the reason I put up the page making fun of those arguments is that they are ones that many atheists get tired of hearing.

Although the arguments are bad, I think that most of the people using them are simply uninformed. They are not using arguments they have thought of themselves, but instead parroting "killer" arguments that they've heard from other theists that are supposed to be unanswerable by atheists. Unlike you, I don't think that theists who have bad arguments against atheism are necessarily unintelligent.

While we're on the subject, you seem to have strong opinions and a lot of experience discussing religion. Could you share with me your reason for believing in a deity? Do you have an argument for the existence of God that is compelling to others, or do you consider it a personal decision? I'd be interested to know.

Thanks for writing.

Well, if you believe that there is no possibility of the existence of a deity, then you are indeed a strong atheist. But let's take a look at this a little more closely.

I agree that there is no workable explanation for the beginning of the existence of the deity. Where we disagree is when you say that nothing can exist without having a definite beginning. There are quantum particles that come into existence uncaused, for example. Also, I'd say that the universe itself is either uncaused or is part of a string of universes stretching back into infinity -- either of which would seemingly cause problems with your argument.

Now let's look at your statement that, "the logic that could theoretically prove or disprove God's existance would be completely incomprehensible to us. That means that scientism, the belief that the question of God's existance is not worth asking or non-applicable, is the correct response." Let's assume for the moment that you are correct about the impossibility of logically proving or disproving the existence of God. I would say that your conclusion does not follow from this premise for three reasons:

1) Not being able to prove whether or not something exists is not proof that it does not exist. The impossibility of proving that there is a universe parallel to our own (even a non-supernatural one) is not proof that such universes do not exist.

2) Even if there is no logical way to prove that a deity exists, there may be a practical way. For example, if God is able to mess with our universe, he might be able to prove that he exists. The fact that (so far as I can tell) no god has ever intervened in this way is not evidence that such intervention is impossible.

3) I believe that scientism is the belief that scientific explanations should be considered primary and that supernatural explanations should be discarded. I generally agree with this in that a) scientific explanations are always more likely than supernatural explanation, and b) if something appears to have a supernatural explanation, then once that something is investigated its explanation isn't supernatural any more (the two-slit experiment in quantum physics comes to mind).

So, getting back to your original statement, the reason I said that I have yet to meet a strong atheist is that at the point I made the statement I had not yet met anyone who said that they believed that the non-existence of a deity is provable. Since then, you and one other correspondent have stated that you do think this is provable, so even though I am not convinced by your argument (at least not yet -- I'm interested to hear more), if you believe you can prove there is no God then I would say you are a strong atheist.

Well, I agree that the "you are now an atheist" part of the site has no foundation, in that it's a joke. On the other hand, my atheism has a very strong philosophical foundation, which I'd be happy to discuss with you.

Regarding the rest of your message, let's take it point by point.

"it is for people who want to have an excuse for sinning": Well, you and I are going to disagree about what is a "sin" so, we'll have to pass on this statement for the time being.

"so people can justify doing wrong by sayin there is no god.": I don't think people should do wrong, and I don't think people who do wrong (by acting against their stated philosophy, for example) should try and find ways to justify or "weasel out" of it.

"you think a conscience was made by mistake?": I think it evolved and/or is learned.

"if so youre probably hooked on lust": I've been happily, monogamously married for fifteen years and didn't "fool around" before I was married. (I'm assuming here that you don't think one can be "hooked on lust" within a monogamous marriage.)

"money": I can't be hooked on something I don't have, can I?

"or drugs": I don't do recreational drugs, I've never done recreational drugs, I've never even tried them.

"(alcohol": I don't drink. I tried it once in college and didn't enjoy it.

"and cigarettes count)": I don't smoke and have never tried it.

"you decide.": I obviously already have.

By the way, in my experience the set of people who are immoral has a pretty significant overlap with the set of people who are religious. Being religious or not does not make one immoral or not -- it's how you act on your moral/religious beliefs (or lack there of) that matters.

Note to my readers: It saddens me that notes like this are almost never accompanied by a working e-mail address. I would love to hear what this person thinks of my response.

Let's start at the end of your note and take as a given than God can't be an empirically bounded entity. I do not necessarily agree with this statement because it really boils down to how we define "God," and I think there are theoretical candidates that could be called "creator" but still be empirical. But taking this as a given will help move our discussion along.

Now, back to the top of your letter. I agree that humans would not be able to access this theoretical realm (I'll call it "God's realm"), and that any evidence for that realm must present itself empirically. I also agree that accepting or rejecting evidence from that realm boils down to a value judgment. But here's where you may be misunderstanding my position -- I think that's okay.

Value judgments in the form of "is proposition A more likely than proposition B" come up all the time in science. I grant you, most of them are not this huge, but I think the only difference is magnitude.

How would I argue against someone who said that God is the most reasonable explanation? Well, I'd probably ask some questions to find out if the person really believes this statement (that is, that they think God is really the most reasonable explanation and not just the explanation they like most). Next, I would ask the person whether they would change their mind if science produced evidence that (for example) life was actually not unlikely at all. If the person, after this discussion, still considers God the best explanation for the universe, then I will accept that. We simply disagree. Of course, definitely stating this deity's existence and assigning qualities to this deity are still a matter of faith in that they have not been proven.

You also point out that there is no counter to someone saying that they believe in God because they have experienced God's realm. That's true -- this is what I meant in a previous note when I talked about proof of God through personal revelation. I can't argue against such a thing, but it's also not compelling proof to those who have not had a revelation. The best I could do is argue that what they experienced is likely something more mundane than God's realm, but I can't prove it and such arguments generally go the same place that the anti-atheist argument "you know in your heart that God exists but deny it" goes (that is, nowhere).

Finally, let's look at whether one is justified in saying "There is no God" by the standards you propose. If the reason one is making that statement is that one considers the possibility of a deity to be vanishingly small, then I would not favor making that statement. The reason is that we are dealing with a subject that is not empirical, so I don't think we can trust empirical methods (such as scientific likelihood) to come to conclusions about it. When we come right down to it, if there is a deity or a God's realm, you and I don't know a thing about it -- any statements we make about its probability of existence are educated guesses, so I shy away from acting like they are more than that. At best, we can make statements about what such a realm is not (because certain qualities would lead to logical contradictions, for example).

This may all sound philosophically wimpy, but there are pragmatic reasons for my thinking in this way. For example:

1) If I say that there is no deity even though I can't "prove" it, it could be said that I have faith that there is no deity. I don't want to go there.

2) I place no value on proving that there is or is not a deity. However, I place a lot of value on helping people sort through their religious beliefs and make sure that those beliefs are consistent and non-contradictory. The possibility of a deity says almost nothing about that deity's characteristics, and it's in these details that I prefer to hold discussions with theists because such things can be logically tested with relative ease. It's a big jump from "there might be a deity" to "the Christian God exists," particularly since very few Christians I've met have a good working knowledge of their own concept of God (as evidenced in the difficulty they often had defining good and evil).

3) Many people who say that God is the most reasonable explanation don't have much familiarity with how Occam's razor works. One example of this is that they often think that Occam would prefer one all-powerful deity to many less-powerful deities (as in Greek mythology). Globally applying their misuse of Occam might lead one to believe that (for example) it is more likely that the pyramids were built by one giant guy than by thousands of normal guys. I think that helping people learn how to use tools like this does more to advance the cause of science than trying to argue against deity as a concept, and I secretly hope that as people learn to use these tools they will realize that God is not necessary.

4) Even if I agreed 100% with your argument that there is no God, I'd say that the argument is inaccessible to your average person without a lot of discussion, and that this discussion would ultimately almost never be beneficial to the theist. Since I say that I am not convinced there is a deity, it is up to religious people to prove to me that there is a deity, and I believe that the exercise of attempting this proof is excellent experience for theists, many of whom have never really thought about why they believe there is a deity.

5) The bulk of people I talk to have no logical reason to believe in a deity (even if they think they do). Their arguments are an attempt to justify their own beliefs, as opposed to the real reason that they believe in the first place. I think that there is huge value in getting people to admit that they believe in a deity only through faith. This essentially brings God into the camp of "personal truth" (as opposed to "compelling truth"), and it's a lot easier to build tolerance and acceptance of others when we realize that everyone has personal truths and that none of them are more valuable than anyone else's. (This is a topic we could go on at great length about, but I think you see what I mean.)

As a final point, I don't have anything against religion in general. It's intolerance and ignorance that I prefer to battle.

Whew! Big response from me. I hope it was worth the wait. I look forward to hearing from you!

I do indeed admit the possibility of an omnipotent entity, but only because I see no way to rule out the possibility of such an entity.

I did not mean to avoid the empirical/supernatural distinction, so I'm sorry that I gave that impression. I agree that any deity would be supernatural, and I believe that it is possible that the supernatural exists (for what it's worth, I also believe the possibility exists that I will only get heads every time I flip a coin even if I flip coins constantly for the rest of my life). You are absolutely right that it is difficult (if even possible) to qualify evidence for the supernatural. If evidence for something seeming to be supernatural appeared (such as evidence for psychic abilities), it might just be evidence for something non-supernatural that we do not yet understand.

So, how do I argue against the claim that God exists? I don't. I argue against evidence that God exists. That is why I don't say that I am an atheist because God doesn't exist and instead say that I am an atheist because I see no reason to believe that God exists.

I actually have a problem with denying the supernatural a priori. Doing so can lead one into certain intellectual traps -- for example, not testing something scientifically because the only explanation you can think of is supernatural.

Or look at it this way -- I can't think of any way that we could test for universes outside of our universe. If such universes exist, they are likely completely inaccessible to us. But would I therefore say that such things definitely do not exist? No, I would not.

I also don't think you should cringe at real and supernatural things in the discussion of complexity. Since I am not convinced that the supernatural exists, invoking it multiplies entities beyond necessity. Any supernatural explanation therefore fails Occam's razor (at least for me) because it includes the supernatural.

You ask why I should require a strong atheist to prove that there is no god when a strong atheist wouldn't accept the possibility of such a thing in the first place. I feel like this just pushes the "prove a negative" problem back a step: instead of proving that there is no possibility of god, the atheist must prove that there is no possibility of the supernatural. I don't know how one could do that.

By the way, there are a whole lot of non-supernatural explanations for the universe that I can't prove aren't correct: aliens created our universe, we all live in the Matrix, solipsism, I'm having an epic dream, etc. I rank the likelihood of these down there with the likelihood of the supernatural, but I'd be hard pressed to prove that any of them are not true.

Finally, regarding "everything is evidence for the existence of God." Okay, but it is not sufficient evidence. There are much more reasonable explanations.

This is a very interesting discussion. I look forward to your response.