Book Banning Gets My Goat! (A Red-Goat Short Ranty-time Thing)

Book Banning Gets My Goat

“Yes, the hard-bound human mind, like the hard-bound soil, has to be ploughed up. Let it shriek as it will, the work must be done, or the light and air will never penetrate, and an ocean of seeds will lie barren on the surface.”

– G.W. Foote

I know many of my rants are dedicated to the perceived ills of religion, but there are other certain things that will get under my skin just as deeply as a religious injustice, and mainly it is the idiocy and the general injustice which comes with willful ignorance.

Browsing the news, we discover it reported that the Idaho school district of Meridian has recently banned Native American author Sherman Alexie’s latest book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for allegedly containing bad language, sexual content, and anti-Christian content.

The book having been banned cause somewhat of an outcry among the Meridian district students at Junior Mountain High School who contested the ban. With the support of their local bookstore, the went around handing out free copies of the banned book (off campus of course to comply with the ruling).

This is when the cops were called in to break up their merry free book giving charity endeavor.

Having the cops called on you nothing new in the day and the life of your average teen, as teenagers are known for traveling in loud obnoxious packs, playing their music at a billion decibels too loud, and generally getting into their fair share of mischief. But the reason for this particular incident is new.

So why were the cops called on these mild-mannered, book loving teens?

The whole series of unfortunate events began earlier in the year when the Meridian school board voted to ban Sherman Alexie’s book. The book, which was assigned reading at Junior Mountain High School, had alarmed a concerned Christian student who in turn showed his (may or may not be Nazi) parents what he deemed to be an offensive and anti-Christian passage in the book and the parents, not being happy about it (since it did not comport to their may or maybe not Nazi beliefs) brought it to the attention of the school board.

So the cops were call, again, why? Because some Meridian district students were giving away a book that some adult somewhere disagreed with. Really, that’s it.

Now before you go jumping to conclusions, let me just say right off the bat that the book’s passages in question are not pornographic in anyway. It was regular old literature. Yes, folks. Literature written by an acclaimed, award-winning, Native American author, Sherman Alexie. Whether or not Alexie’s ethnicity had anything to do with prompting the parent’s hateful attack on his literature is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Banning books and racism often go hand-in-hand, just ask any Nazi.

Needless to say, I think banning books is, in general, a really terrible idea. But banning books you haven’t ever read, I’m sorry to say, makes you a complete idiot (if not a Nazi). At any rate, the story gets better.

The (may or may not be Nazi) parents who objected to the book were obviously not thinking about the teens living on Idaho’s five Native American reservations, who look up to Sherman Alexie, a succesful Native American author and a role model for those who want to follow in his footsteps. The whole book-banning thing didn’t sit well with those who had read the book and found it innocent of the charges lobied against it, and the district’s local teens fought back, organizing a petition to have the book reinstated.

In response, a local Boise bookseller, Rediscovered Books, crowd-funded a $3,400 campaign to buy copies of the book for each of the 350 students who signed the petition. The teens handed out books in Kleiner Park (a public park) and gave away nearly every copy. That’s when the cops were called in to break up this otherwise peaceful protest.

Boise news station KBOI reported that the cops were baffled when they arrived on the scene—and how could they not be, for the teens weren’t doing anything remotely disruptive. The police didn’t find any harm in what the teens were doing and left them to their business of sharing free literature and spreading knowledge (a gift the so-called Nazi parents who called the police in would greatly benefit from).

But the story gets even better yet.

Sherman Alexie’s publisher, Hatchette Book Group, heard about the ordeal and sent 350 additional books to Rediscover Books to give away on top of the ones they had already given out. So, I feel a hearty congratulations goes out to the teens of Meridian school district and Junior Mountain High School for a victory well-deserved.

In fact, the parent’s brash cop-calling behavior is already backfiring in their faces. I am sure there are many like me who haven’t read a good Sherman Alexie book since college, and this whole incident piqued my curiosity, so I went ahead and purchased my own e-book copy The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for my Kindle. I’ll be reading it this weekend.

But that leaves one pressing question. More of a concern, really. Who are these horrible, anti-intellectual, narrow-minded parents who think they can go around banning books they obviously haven’t read? Who do they think they are to tell the district of Meridian what books it can and cannot read? Who are they to decide that handing out literature is a felony so terrible that the cops must be brought in to put an end to it? Finally, don’t these parents realize that peaceful public protests are protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? What could be more peaceful than giving away free books in a public park?

It seems the moral of the story is clear, while the young people of the Meridian school district, posessing wisdom beyond their years, are out on the streets doling out knowledge, quite literally, the book-banning parents need to go back to school to get “ejumacated” and stop wasting everyone’s time attempting to ban books and maybe read some instead.

For more on the incident please see:

http://www.dailydot.com/geek/teen-policed-for-giving-away-absolutely-true-diary/

And here:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2014/04/16/idaho-students-to-get-copies-of-sherman-alexie-novel-banned-from-curriculum/

Quote of the Day: Ashley Mobley

My friend Ashley said something that I think needs to be said much more often with regard to the perception of the self which many religious seem to foster, especially Christianity. Basically, that old canard that we are broken, tainted, and in need of repair--in need of saving. It's all malarkey. The idea of being fallen, or sinful, or whatever has never been anything but a far-fetched, highly implausible, practically incoherent, unsubstantiated, metaphysical concept that is so absurdly dehumanizing that the only way one wouldn't find it offensive is if they had been literally brain-washed. 

"I was not born into a magical curse.

I am not inherently evil or broken.

I know of no evidence or convincing philosophical argument for the existence of god(s).

The end."

--Ashley Mobley  

New Anthology Collecting 'Deconversion' Stories

I have co-edited a new anthology with Jonathan M.S. Pearce, a publisher, philosopher, and blogger from England. You can check him out on his blog The Tippling Philosopher over at the Skeptic Ink Network (SIN). 

 The anthology, Beyond an Absence of Faith, collects the personal 'deconversion' stories of ex-religious believers. A deconversion story of the irreligious is the equivalent of the religious 'testimony' of faith. Just as with a 'testimony' which is a personal account of how one came to God or found faith, the deconversion story is the opposite account of how one lost faith and realized all the God-business just wasn't for them. 

What I like most about the book is that it's not an attack on religion. It's not a philosophical piece trying to deconstruct religion. It's much more a reflective piece looking back on individual experiences collecting the personal stories from people from all walks of life who went from living a life steeped in religion to a life without it.

Some of the stories are harrowing, as we have people literally escaping cults, we have stories of mysticism and spiritual pilgrimages across India, we have stories of pastors turning away from nearly 30 years of preaching because they couldn't live with what they came to see as a great big lie any longer. 

 Perhaps my favorite story is by a Muslim girl, a teenager, whose parents have pre-arranged her marriage to a man she's never met and who refuses to answer her Facebook messages to get acquainted. And amid this confusing time in her life, she personally decides she no longer believes, and takes off her head scarf. The weight of this action is no trivial matter, and the rift it causes in her family and friends is no laughing matter either, and I can honestly say that her story is a real tear-jerker. 

It looks like this book will hit the presses this week or next and be just in time for the first couple weeks of May. Keep a look out for it and I'll keep you all posted!

Believe in Good. That is all.

Jesus the Corn King: Examining some Parallels Between Jesus and Dionysus

Jesus the Corn King: Examining the
Parallels between Jesus and Dionysus

“BEHOLD, God’s Son is come unto this land

Of heaven’s hot splendour lit to life, when she

Of Thebes, even I, Dionysus, whom the brand

Who bore me, Cadmus’ daughter Semelê,

Died here. So, changed in shape from God to man…”

– Euripides (The Bacchae)

According to the biblical scholar and historian Dennis MacDonald there are extensive connections between the Gospel stories found in the New Testament and the Greek myths and legends of old. In fact, MacDonald has gone further than anyone by showing that these links are more than just mere parallels but has shown, in many instances, these links to be exact copies of Greek phrases lifted right out of the Iliad and Odyssey.[1]

If these borrowings are undeniable, as MacDonald contends they are, then what about other parallels and similarities to the ancient Greek stories and the New Testament? Shouldn’t these exist as well? I contend that they do, and more specifically, I contend that the Jesus narrative closely follows, if not borrows from, the myth of Dionysus.

Modern scholars such as Friedrich Holderlin, Martin Hengel, Barry Powell, Robert M. Price, and Peter Wick, among others, have argued that there are distinct parallels between the ancient Dionysian religion and early Christianity. Perhaps more striking than this, however, are the parallels between Jesus himself and the pagan god Dionysus, especially when it come to ritual, wine, and symbolism.[2]

In fact, there seems to have been a direct rivalry between early early Christianity and the popular Dionysian religion. Scholar E. Kessler has detailed that the Dionysian cult had developed into a monotheism by the 4th century CE giving direct competition to early Christianity.[3] It does not take a leap of faith to imagine this rivalry existed prior to the Dionysian cult’s transformation as well.

Meanwhile, Peter Wick has shown how Jesus turning water into wine at the Marriage of Cana (John 2:1-11; and John 2:3-5) was intended to show that Jesus was superior to his pagan counterpart Dionysus.

Wick notes that the numerous references to wine, miracle and wine, and ritual and wine cannot possibly represent a Christian vs. Jewish controversy, as there is no discernible wine symbolism in Judaism, but that the entire book of John is laden with such wine symbolism as it is meant as a Christian attempt to depict Jesus as superior to Dionysus. [4]

The biblical historian Robert M. Price, citing the second century Greek geographer Pausanias, tells us that

Jesus changes water into wine in John 2:1-11, in apparent imitation of the annual miracle of the priests of Dionysus at Eleia. “The worship of Dionysos is one of the principal Elean cults, and they say the god himself visits them at the feat of Thuia…. The priests take three empty basins in the presence of the citizens and of any foreigners there may be and deposit them in a building. The priests themselves and anyone else who wants put seals on the doors of the building; the seals can be inspected the next day, and when they go inside they find the basins full of wine (Pausanias Guide to Greece 6.26.1-2). This would not be the only Dionysian legacy in the Gospels. John’s True Vine discourse is another. Some ancient writers considered Dionysus and Yahveh to be the same deity, and the Sabazius religion of Asia Minor certainly seems to have been built on that premise.[5]

Studies in comparative myth have shown how Jesus shares the dying and rising god mytheme with many other ancient gods.[6] Jesus’s mythic qualities are also highly reflective of many of the mythical and mystical beliefs of other cultures and traditions which predate him.

Even the beloved Christian apologist C.S. Lewis acknowledged the Dionysian and mythic elements in the Jesus Christ narrative often referring to Jesus as the dying and rising “Corn King” which parallels the symbolic celebration of the harvest, which Dionysus is traditionally representative of.[7]

Lewis clearly took his language from Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, in which Frazer refers to the archetypal “sacrificial-scapegoat,” such as the dying and rising gods Osiris, Lityerses, Adonis, and Bacchae as the “Korn King.”

The dying and rising Dionysus was more than just symbolic of the seasons, however, as in Euripides play The Bacchae (circa 405 B.C.E.) it is said that through Dionysus’ death and the spilling of his blood, like wine, freed his followers from sin.[8]

In The Bacchae, Dionysus frequently refers to himself as the Child of God whereas Jesus is frequently referred to as the Son of God in the Gospels. Each of them are considered by their followers to be God incarnated as man. Both are raised by foster parents with royal ties (King Athamas and his wife Ino in the case of Dionysus and Joseph and Mary of the royal bloodline of King David in the case of Jesus) and in both cases the foster parents are instructed by angelic figures (the winged Hermes in for Dionysus and the winged Gabriel for Jesus) to raise the child in a specific way or manner. Both infants are birthed in secrecy while fleeing from the powers that would seek to have them killed (the ever jealous queen of the gods Hera in the case of Dionysus and King Herod the Great in the case of Jesus). Both Jesus and Dionysus get sentenced to death and both overcome death. After being reborn it is said each will be “exalted on high.”

Perhaps even more significant, however, are the Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus discourses which contain parallels so ripe and numerous it almost seems as if those anonymous Greek writers of the Gospels were so enamored with The Bacchae discourse between Dionysus and Pentheus that they simply retold it using their own dying and rising god figure, Jesus Christ.

In fact, the Pontius Pilate and Jesus dialog mirrors the King Pentheus and Dionysus dialog in such profound ways that I am strongly inclined to think it was the template for that particular discussion found in the New Testament.

Comparing the Gospel stories of Jesus’ trial with the trial of Dionysus in The Bacchae, we discover that both Jesus and Dionysus get arrested and, subsequently are interrogated by the appointed ruler of the land; Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus respectively, who then proceeds to take time out of their very busy schedule to share a philosophical exchange with the offenders. Pilate is worried about another insurrection thinking Jesus might be attempting to lead a revolt, whereas Pentheus is worried that Dionysus’ influence will continue to spread a rebellious kind of madness among the people who worship him. After they are questioned about their intentions, both give vague responses in much the same way, the most notable being that they both claim to “bare witness to the truth.”

Finally, after the lengthy philosophical exchange, both of our demigod protagonists are accused of sedition and ultimately killed in a blood sacrifice to cleanse their followers sins. But this is just the summary overview. If you were to actually read The Bacchae a little bit more in depth, you would find that there are many more parallels worth considering as well.

For example, after his discussion with King Pentheus, facing the charge of treason for claiming divinity (which, we shall not forget, Jesus faces similar, if not the very same, charges against himself),[9] [10] Dionysus refers to himself as a lion walking into a net (The Bacchae, line 1036) thus predicting his own demise. This mirrors Jesus’ prediction of his own death as well. Although it could be claimed a rather loose parallel, Jesus too is likened to the Lion of Judah in Revelation 5:5. It is simply interesting to note that both figures were likened to lions by those who authored their stories.

Other parallels between Jesus and Dionysus include the previously discusses fact that both share direct ties to wine symbolism (cf. John 2: 1-12 with The Bacchae lines 254-56; 493-96; and 834-35). At the marriage in Cana, Jesus turns water into wine, and takes on the ceremonial role of Dionysus who fills the empty wine flasks of his followers. It is worth noting that, along with the guests, Jesus and his disciples had drunk all of the wine (whether or not they get drunk isn’t mentioned, but one can assume it a likely possibility given what follows). This prompted the call for more wine, and instead of performing the Dionysian miracle of simply refilling everyone’s flask just once, Jesus goes above and beyond and changes six stone water jars, each holding 30 gallons, equating to roughly 180 gallons of water into wine.

Needless to say, 180 gallons of wine is far more than required for such a small wedding. Was Jesus trying to get everyone drunk? We might be forgiven for wondering if the Gospel writers weren’t overcompensating in trying to make Jesus into the new Dionysus, or perhaps this is this just another example of the Bacchean spirit of drunkenness being embedded in the story of Jesus? It is appropriate then that Jesus, like Dionysus, was also accused of drinking with known drunkards and that he himself was a known glutton and a drunkard (Mat. 11:19), an accusation he never denied.

Further similarities between Jesus and Dionysus include the fact that each of their sacrifices guarantees the salvation from sin for their followers (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 with The Bacchae line 1037), and both are sacrificed on a hill (cf. Mark 15:22 with The Bacchae line 1047), and both rise into the heavens upon the clouds (cf. Matt. 26:64 and Mark 14:62 with The Bacchae lines 1685-86), and both are referred to as God’s true Son (cf. 1 John 5:20 with The Bacchae line 1050).

Finally, it is well worth mentioning that throughout their final hours before death both are surrounded by their most loyal female followers (in the case of Jesus the book of John mentions it’s the three Marys – his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the wife of Cleopas – and for Dionysus it’s Agave and her women attendants) and upon rising from death it is specifically these loyal female followers who discover them risen.

Now these numerous parallels do not guarantee beyond a reason of doubt that all or any of the aspects of the Jesus narrative was based in any way on the Dionysian myth, but I feel that the parallels are so numerous, so uncanny, with the very order of events corresponding to one another, that it would be unwise to dismiss such a possibility offhand.

As for the antagonists, both Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus, meet similar ends dying atop mountains. According to legend, Pontius Pilate is filled with sorrow and remorse after Jesus’ death, and commits suicide during the first year of Caligula’s reign, while another legend places his death at Mount Pilatus, in Switzerland. Likewise, King Pentheus, whose name literally means ‘man of sorrow’ (from the greek word péntho [πένθος] which means sorrow), is driven mad and runs into the woods of Mount Cithaeron, and is killed when he runs into the Bacchanalia (the all female Maenads), the followers of Dionysus, who cut off his head.

Given these similarities, I have to ask myself: were the Gospel writers, who were educated in Greeks and were trained in the ancient myths and stories of their culture, wouldn’t have put such references into the Gospel narrative of Jesus deliberately? If it is all just one big coincidence, what a coincidence indeed! A whole string of them! All seeming to form a distinct pattern connecting Jesus to Dionysus!

As noted earlier, there is no prevalent wine-symbolism in Jewish culture, but suddenly it is ripe within Hellenistic Christianity and the Jesus narrative. Why should it be so prevailing here in association to Jesus if not to pay homage to the Dionysian myths by retelling them using the new dying and rising Corn King? It makes sense that those living in the first, second, and third centuries would have been familiar quite with the Dionysian myth and Euripides’ The Bacchae, and would have instantly seen the parallels. I can only imagine that in the Hellenistic minds of the time, Greeks seeing Jesus as the new and improved Dionysus would be more inclined to accept Christianity. Why shouldn’t they?

It is only modern Christians, most of whom haven’t read Euripides and remain largely unaware of these parallels, who would find the suggestion that the Gospel writers were deliberately trying to make Jesus into a revamped Dionysus a troublesome consideration. But to those early Greeks, in a time when Christianity was rapidly expanding, such deliberate parallels would have made excellent pieces of early Christian propaganda for gaining pagan converts and allowing Jesus Christ to usurp one of the most popular and prominent pagan gods of the old religion and replace him, thus gaining status as the definitive Corn King.

---

[1] See Dennis MacDonald’s two books on this topic: The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark and Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? by Yale University Press.

[2] See: Pausanias, Description of Greece 6. 26. 1 – 2, and cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2. 34a

[3] E. Kessler, “Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire,” Exeter, pp. 17-20, July 2006.

[4] Peter Wick, “Jesus gegen Dionysos? Ein Beitrag zur Kontextualisierung des Johannesevangeliums,”  Biblica (Rome:Pontifical Biblical Institute) Vol. 85 (2004) 179-198.

[5] Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, 2003, Prometheus Press, pp. 158-59.

[6] Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1985, pp. 64, 132. Also see: The Christ Myth (Westminster College Oxford Classics in the Study of Religion) by Arthur Drews, 1998, p. 170. Also: Deconstructing Jesus by Robert M. Price, 2000, pp. 86-93, and all of chapter 7. And James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

[7] C.S. Lewis, The Complete Signature Classics, 2002, HarperCollins, p. 402.

[8] See the Gilbert Murray translation of The Bacchae. Available online: http://www.bartleby.com/8/8/3.html

[9] Barry B. Powell. Classical Myth Second ed. With new translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998.

[10] Martin Hegnel, Studies in Early Christology, 2005, p.331.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Although it is slightly dated, it's still one of the funnest, most informative, and best interviews I've ever seen. It's definitely worth your time to view the full thing.

God & Naturalism: Take Us To The Threshold!

Analytical reasoning is not easy. I'll be the first to admit it. It took me four years of studying philosophy before I became comfortable with it. It took another year to feel like I knew how to even apply it to the questions I had. I've always been a systematic thinker, and I aced all my philosophy and theory classes back in uni, if you consider such things an accomplishment. I've taught rhetoric and argumentation at the college level before, so I do know that people struggle with it. Organizing our thoughts is never easy, let alone making them clear to others.

So even though I got better at analytical reasoning, having read Kurt Godel, Burtrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein and having taken courses on modal logic and being a student of Kant's reasoning, it has only been incrementally, not to mention painstakingly, baby steps that I have gradually become able to see the analogs that are lying under the surface of any given philosophical problem.

But in philosophy the big questions do not usually have easy answers. Analogs helps us make sense of the philosophical problem, but they aren't the end all to the philosophical debate.

Like those Magic Eye autostereogram images that you have to step back from and squint peculiarly at before the hidden image becomes clear. Sometimes taking a step back gives us a much needed perspective.

It seems there was some confusion regarding my earlier statements regarding atheist vs. theist assumption in relationship to nature, and I wand to expound on this topic a bit.

Earlier I said that both the atheist and the theist make a priori assumption to get their respective theology off the ground. This, I mentioned, was true of any belief.

As such, I explained that the respective premises are as follows:

Theism: God x 1 = 1 God.

Atheism: God x 0 = 0 God.

This is the a priori assumption either position must make to form either belief there is a God or belief that there is no God.

Additionally, I claimed that the atheist's assumptions are finished since their assumption apparently matches with the physical reality we observe.

The reason is obviously because atheists haven't added anything to the equation. In philosophical language we say the atheist has not made a positive claim while the theist has.

The theist has added--or posited--something to the equation. They have posited +1 God to the physical reality we observe.

***

Atheists and theists are both in agreement that God should, in principle, be provable. A theist who says we can't prove the existence of God has backed themselves into an impossible corner of an impossible hole they cannot climb out of. As such, no reasonable person would negate their own belief by making it impossible to prove. As such, theists and atheists alike look toward the natural world for signs of what might constitute evidence for God.

Some people think it is up to the atheist to disprove the negative claim. But I maintain this doesn't make sense because the atheist claim seems to match with observation.

That doesn't mean the atheist couldn't still be wrong, but if they are, God's features are hidden from us otherwise there would be no dispute over the issue. In order to claim atheists simply haven't understood the obvious evidence staring them in the face is to talk down to the intelligence of people who are the majority in fields such as philosophy and science. If God was obvious, we'd know it before most theists would (but that would technically make us theists, but you get my point).

However, I don't think the theist assumption pans out. At least, it doesn't appear to be the case.

Traditionally, theists haven't felt secure in the claim +1 God exists either.

In fact, they have posited things such as God existing outside of reality, beyond space time, as an eternal being, who is all powerful and all knowing necessarily, otherwise there would be no interaction between this being's open-existence with our closed-off existence.

Somewhere on the Venn diagram God's reality must intersect with our reality or there is absolutely no way to detect God and the theist claim is rendered futile.

It is because we live in a physical world where these things are easy to measure, observe, and test that any disturbance of them would be equally noticeable. That is, anything crossing that threshold would be immediately detectable as a disturbance or anomaly.

As such, this is the playing field where we would look for interactions with a supernatural entity like God.

So when theists posit +1 God, we look toward nature to see if any residual ripples are immediately detectable from the overlap which would need to exist between our reality and God's to confirm the existence of such an entity.

But when we look down at the pond, all we see is clear, still waters.

***

The atheist isn't required to make any additional assumptions about the nature of reality. Some may, but it's not required. Our belief with respect to the non-existence of God appears tentatively justified by the features of the natural physical world we observe.

Theists on the other hand, well, all their work is all still ahead of them if they want us to assume along with them that there is more to nature than what is observed. And in order to take the next step in forming a comprehensible belief that takes +1 God beyond a mere a priori assumption, more assumptions will have to be made--at least until definitive evidence is forthcoming.

The assumption that God exists, for example, is not enough to actually establish +1 God exists. You see, if God existed within the same physical reality as cats, airplanes, donuts, and porn stars there would be no dispute as to God's existence. Scientists would have surely detected him by now. But they haven't. Therefore theists have to assume God exists outside of physical reality in order to safeguard God from being imminently falsified when everybody suddenly realizes that the claim +1 God does not match observation.

Now one may say we shouldn't always demand empirical evidence for God. But this argument doesn't hold water because it ignores the fact that the reality we do live in does act in accordance to certain detectable physical laws. It is precisely because we exist within such a system that we have no reason to expect that the system wouldn't detect an anomaly such as God or the supernatural; either directly or indirectly.

All we can do is say, take us to the threshold. That intersecting segment on the Venn diagram where the interaction will be.

So the real question becomes, in a world where a basic set of physical laws explain the features of reality we observe, why wouldn't we be able to pin-down a God?

***

God may be complex, but the system we are seeking to describe in relationship to this God is rather simple. To suggest we couldn't detect something like a God's interaction with that system goes back to making God unfalsifiable, thus impossible to prove. In which case, the claim +1 God exists becomes incoherent.

Now, I am certain some smart-ass theist will come along and point out that atheists cannot prove that God does not exist, but then they have misunderstood how demonstration works.

You don't prove things exist by proving what doesn't exist.

If you say something doesn't exists but someone can conjure it up for you to test, then you'd have no further reason to claim it didn't exist.

The very reason atheists can claim God doesn't likely exist is because the burden of proof simply hasn't been met to establish, beyond a reason of a doubt, that +1 God is a valid claim.

It's true that both theologies appear tentative, but it seems to me one has a higher probability of being correct. Mainly the one which makes less assumptions and doesn't complicate the equation. The more assumptions you make the more arguments you will require to justify each additional assumption, ad naseaum--or at least as many times as will be required to get everyone to the same understanding of God.

That's the challenge. It's a rather big challenge. And it's probably why after two-thousand years of theists professing the existence of God we are still having the same ole conversation.

If only professing were enough though, because I'll tell you something--I have lots of things I'd like to profess. Like how much Angelina Jolie loves me, the fact that I'm a multi-billionaire, and how I will likely live to eight hundred years old. Well, like I said, professing is one thing--proving it all is entirely another thing.